Depth
by Barryium
Summary: Death had never been part of the plan. But then, death was rarely an option for those who wanted to live. And I had wanted to live. Badly. But the cost of living a shinobi's life wasn't something that I was used to, their world was too violent. Yet I found myself wrapped in chains of circumstance, sinking into this world too quickly – too deeply. Towards my own undoing. SI/OC
1. The Dead Days are Gone

**A/N: Alllrighty then. I'm committing the biggest sin of all fan fiction writers and doing a Self-Insert OC. Is the term "self-insert" supposed to even be taken literally?**

**Meh.**

**So obviously there have been a huge amount of SI OC fan fictions being written recently, and of course I thought "why the hell not?" Also, I've put the prologue and first chapter together. As I'm sure you can see, the word count isn't huge and uploading them separately just wouldn't have been worth it. The next few chapters will be longer.**

**This is just the first chapter so… let me know what you think :)**

* * *

**Prologue and Chapter 1: Dead Days are Gone**

My name is Ayaka Yūhi, and I'm going to tell you a story.

The story of a girl who died, and how she didn't stay dead.

There are many theories pertaining to the nature of death, ponderings on the existence of souls or the afterlife. I suppose I still feel a little cheated that even though _I_ died, I'm still not entirely sure that they exist myself. When I died, there was no birds-eye view of my lifeless body as I did not float up towards Heaven, nor did I encounter a Purgatory where I was told to "go back" by some otherworldly creature – where I was not just sent into life, but a different world entirely.

I didn't encounter anything like that. At least, not that I remember…

Yet, I retained the memories of my life. My old life. The one I'd had before I had died. I knew that I was dead. I hadn't been expecting to die when I had awoken that morning, but I suppose that that's the case for most people. Although I had always thought that death would only just mean an idle and isolated afterlife, where the naïve believed that you'd either live in a paradise or hell for the rest of eternity and that nothing proceeds from that point onwards.

And I had been so very naïve.

* * *

…I …I was being squeezed. Squeezed and pushed. The pressure on me growing to insurmountable levels. Everywhere. That's all I could feel. The pressure. That painful pressure that squeezed and constricted tightly around me, moving me forward. Pressure on my head, pressure on my chest, pressure on my throat—

_My throat!_

I couldn't breathe! The memory of large hands on my throat made me want to scream in terror. Large hands wrapping around my throat in this infernal darkness, seeing my struggling face reflected in two round mirrors of darkness. I wanted to scream, to cry out, to reach up and pull the hands away but I could not. My throat had already closed over and my limbs felt like they were made out of lead.

But then the pressure was no more and I released a choked cry from terror as my environment suddenly changed. From comfortable solitary darkness to a world filled with swirling lights that hurt my eyes.

I had been born.

Only this time I remembered being squeezed from a woman's uterus and emerging covered in a stranger's body fluids after a thirty-eight hour labour. _Thirty-eight hours!_ As labours went, it was definitely possible to have worse but thirty-eight hours was still a long time to be squeezed from a uterus no matter what anybody says. Especially when you're conscious.

Needless to say, with all the pushing and prodding and pressure, by the time I was born I was more than a little sleep-deprived.

I woke up blind. Snuggled between two warm bodies, it was then that I had my first real opportunity to understand what was happening to me.

I was alive.

Again.

Not only that, but I was actually thinking. _Thinking like an adult_. Not like the newborn baby that I was. This wasn't normal. Obviously something had gone wrong. By all means I shouldn't be self-aware at this young an age. Would this mean that I would never experience infantile amnesia? Was that a good or a bad thing?

Time passed as days turned into weeks that quickly culminated into months, and I slowly came to terms that I had to be spoon-fed and have my body cleaned for me as though I were an invalid. Which I suppose I was. But it was still embarrassing and I hated it.

But it's not like I had much of a say on the matter.

My parents – my _new_ parents – seemed intent on ingratiating themselves onto me, and I soon realised that with my growing affection towards them my memories of my old parent were growing dimmer and more vague. I didn't want to forget them, but I was. Their voices were the first to go, followed by – much later – their faces until all I could recall of them were warped caricatures of their personalities and general traits that I retained only through a memory of a memory.

It was rather distressing, so I tried to stop thinking about them.

And slowly, over some time, I began to forget about the details of my previous life altogether.

* * *

More time passed and mama was teaching me how to read by the time I was three years old. I was always hungry for knowledge, excited at the prospect of being able to read on my own. It took a while to learn to read the language that they spoke but mama and papa seemed quite impressed with my progress.

My sister would often help me with memorising and drawing my characters after she came home from the academy where she was training to be a kunoichi. Father was a shinobi too, as was his father and his father before him – my great-grandfather – who was one of the first civilian-born shinobi in the country to attain the rank of Jōnin. It made me proud of my heritage.

It was only fitting that I'd be trained as a kunoichi and carry on my family's pride, so we could become a "shinobi family".

_Shinobi…_

There was something so familiar about that word, something that was on the proverbial tip of my tongue, a feeling of vague familiarity with that single word. It was the same feeling I have when I see the symbol etched into Father's hitai-ate, an odd swirly symbol that was the sign of the shinobi of my village.

I wanted to wear that symbol on my own hitai-ate one day.

* * *

Father began my own proper training when I was a little over four years old. Previously he had had mama work me through basic chakra control exercises as well as making me memorise and learn every kanji they thought appropriate for me to learn at my age and then some.

I practically bounced with anticipation and excitement as Father led me into our backyard to begin training. Finally, _finally!_ I was actually going to start learning the good stuff, learning how to defend myself as well as my loved ones. However, Father led me to the seats situated in front of the small cherry blossom tree that was still in bloom although it was autumn and the weather was beginning to cool.

"Ayaka-chan."

"Hai!"

"Ayaka-chan, I want to know what you want to be when you grow up?" Father asked me, leaning in close to me. "Know that I will not judge you. You can follow any path you wish with my blessing."

I frowned; I had definitely not been expecting this. Of course he had to know what I wanted to be, I hadn't been practicing chakra control over the last twelve months to just turn around and say that I wanted to be a… what? a waitress or a-a _laundry maid_ instead?

"E-eh? Otou-san I… I want to be a kunoichi! You know that!"

"You do know that being a shinobi is very dangerous – life-threatening, in fact. You're going to have to live a life by the rules and often put the sake and wants of others above your own needs."

Was he _trying _to dissuade me from becoming a kunoichi?

Surely not! I was the brightest in my preschool, and I had no doubts about it. At four years old I had above average chakra control even among the children of shinobi clans, an extremely large vocabulary and – perhaps most importantly – I was motivated. I knew where I wanted to go, what career path I wanted to follow, and I knew that I would be able to do a great many things by following the road I was currently on.

_No one is going to stop me_.

The vehemence in that one sentence alone was both perplexing and helped soothe any doubts Father might have implanted in me. It was just puzzling from where this integral admission had come from. Certainly not from me.

"I know, Papa. I know." I said, hoping he wouldn't question me further.

Of course, he did.

"Then why? You can live a nice safe life, Ayaka. Away from danger. You can marry whomever you like-" _as if_ "-and live a long life. You won't have to see people die. _I_ won't have to see _you_ die."

"U-um... I… I… Uh, people die, Papa. People die all the time. People die because they're too weak. P-people also die because they're too strong. People die from sickness and p-people die in wars." I stuttered out, trying to construe my feelings. "I-I don't want to die from being weak. I don't want to die at all. But, uh, if I had the choice I would prefer dying for being strong – dying for defending my village and family."

Papa nodded, a small smile forming on his angular face providing some warmth to his red eyes and I let out a silent sigh of relief. He looked away from me, over my shoulder. I turned. Mama stood behind me, her beautiful face blank and unreadable. Obviously this had been her idea. I felt like I had passed a test but of a nature that I was unable to determine.

"Very well," Mama said, giving me a small smile. I had every notion that she was trying to make me at ease but I could still sense her uneasiness of sending another child out into the world to become a soldier. But this was my choice – not hers.

Papa nodded at mama before she retreated back inside our home before turning to me. "Today we'll just be doing some chakra control exercises, but from after today you're mother will be teaching you chakra control-"

"Why? Mama has already been teaching me chakra control," I interrupted.

Papa gave me a stern look. "Do not interrupt me, Ayaka."

"H-hai. G-gomen Otou-san," I acquiesced, ducking my head.

"What you've learned so far is only the basics of the basics, your mother will be teaching you how to apply chakra in real life scenarios, like to enhance your speed and strength. She will be extraordinarily good at developing your control due to her proficiency in genjutsu. Don't look at me like that Ayaka, your mother may not look like it at the moment but she was a rather exceptional genjutsu-user before she left duty when Kurenai was born." He explained with a distant look in his eyes before snapping back to the present. "Meanwhile, I get to teach you all the practical and _fun_ things, like taijutsu and shuriken throwing. And then perhaps some jutsu when you're older."

I squealed and clapped my hands in excitement. I'm sure that my eyes were sparkling. "Can we work on them now? Right now?"

Papa smiled but shook his head slowly. "No, for today we'll only be working on chakra control. To begin…"

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting there, with Father first coaching me through breathing exercises before showing me the basics to chakra control. I was only able to make it swish around in my torso and was unable to concentrate any chakra into any of my limbs much to my chagrin. But you couldn't exactly be an expert on chakra control in the span of just a few hours. And by the end of the afternoon I was surprised to find that I was not only starving but also so tired I could barely stand on my own.

"You've done really well today, Ayaka-chan," Father said, helping me to my feet before giving up and pulling me up into his arms, carrying me towards our house. "Your chakra reserves are steadily increasing, which is always a good sign." I perked up a little at the praise. "But you've still to manage applying chakra to help aid your muscles before I'll let you touch anything like ninjutsu or genjutsu." I wilted a little.

"Ayaka-chan!" A voice called from our lounge room as father carried me in through the sliding door before placing me down on the mat-covered floor and retreating to his bedroom for some rest. He had a mission coming up in a few days, after all. "Where are you, Ayaka-chan?"

"Nee-san!" I called back, hurrying to the lounge room. "I'm coming! I'm coming!"

Kurenai greeted me with a hug in the doorway to the lounge room and I squeezed her back hard. "I saw you practicing with otou-san," she noted, smiling at me kindly.

My sister didn't have a bad bone in her body and I adored that about her just as she seemingly adored me. I admit, she spoiled me a lot, sneaking me her slice of cake whenever mother went into a baking frenzy and smuggling me up onto the roof on some nights and showing me the unfamiliar constellations.

"I know! I'm going to start training, and father says that if I do well in his taijutsu lessons I might be starting at the Academy by the beginning of next year!" I grinned.

Kurenai grinned back. "Just make sure that you concentrate on your lessons. Taijutsu is going to be very important in defending yourself, especially if you're learning the family skillset."

I frowned. "Family skillset? What's that?"

Kurenai's laugh tinkled like a bell and she rubbed me on the head. "Genjutsu, of course. Both mama and father's family's are learned in the illusory techniques of genjutsu, so they have to make sure that they can protect themselves from physical attack."

She seemed to be expecting an answer from me, perhaps whether or not I was keen to learn genjutsu like our ancestors, or move onto something a bit more mainstream. Perhaps ninjutsu. But as Kurenai stood there waiting for my answer a detail I had long since forgotten resurfaced in my memory – about genjutsu. That genjutsu was the art of illusions and as such were incorporeal and difficult to use to your advantage in battle. It was practically unheard of to be able to physically harm someone through the use of genjutsu only. But it was good at fooling and turning the battle in your favour, given that the enemy was unable to break the genjutsu, of course.

Kurenai somehow seemed to understand my reverie and gave me a quick squeeze of a hug before wishing me goodnight and making her way to bed.

Obviously I still had a lot of things to think about in becoming a shinobi for the village. And not just the question of if I was going to learn genjutsu too. I didn't want to admit – not even really to myself – but Papa's talk of certain death for a shinobi life had scared me, and I knew that I would end up spending most of the night awake and trying to weigh up the pros and cons of being a shinobi versus being a citizen.

Sighing, I found mama and papa and bade them both goodnight before going up to bed myself.

**A/N: Soooo? What did you think? Lemme know xD**


	2. The Academy

**A/N: I'm back! I've decided that I'm going to update once a week, though only after the following chapter is finished and since I've nearly finished chapter 3 I thought 'why not?' xD**

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Chapter 2: The Academy

Starting at the Academy was scary. I'd spent the whole night awake and practically bouncing off of my bedroom walls. Would I be good enough? Was I up to standard? Kurenai had told me that there was nothing to worry about. That the civilian-born kids usually start with zero prior training. It was unfathomable – especially after having experienced the training that my father had put me through.

Though I suppose that it accounted for why there was a lack of civilian-born shinobi in the ranks. They would be hard-pressed to catch up to children who had been hardened and trained from the moment that they could walk.

I started at the Academy on a warm, sunny day. Papa had managed to push back taking his genin team on their D-rank mission until that afternoon so that he and my mother could walk me in on my first day. I was so nervous of making a good first impression that I slipped my hand out of my mother's as we arrived on Academy grounds.

It was a large red building with the character for "fire" on a sign above the building. It was familiar to me; I had been here before with my mother when we had to go pick up Kurenai before she began insisting that she could make her own way home. Mother had been down about it for a while – Kurenai had come off as a little brusque – but I managed to keep her hands full and mind elsewhere by nagging her into more chakra exercises. With Mama's help, I found that I was able to apply my chakra into techniques – mostly just focussing chakra in my limbs to help strengthen them, but she also secretly taught me a genjutsu. It was a small genjutsu, one that had been taught to beginners of genjutsu in her family for generations. It didn't do very much, merely causing the air to appear to ripple as if it were a hot day, and thus was useless in a fight, but mother was ecstatic when I was able to seemingly master it on the first try. Although, she told me not to mention it to Papa – he wasn't a fan of his in-laws, apparently. Or perhaps they weren't fans of him. Either way, we – Kurenai and I – had no contact with our maternal side of the family.

Mother snatched up my hand again, laughing when I tried to tug it away again. Eventually I just let her have my hand.

There were plenty of parents there for the Academy's Orientation Day. There were older students too, most performing small jutsus and such to impress the large amount of civilian families that were planning on sending their child into the Academy to become a shinobi. It stunned me how they didn't seem to comprehend that all those backflips and low-level fire-style ninjutsus were to be used so that they could be used to fight – to _kill_ – other people. It seemed wrong. The tools used in the act of taking another's life shouldn't be used as though they were simple acrobatics and magical tricks – they were a means to an end, fair and simple.

A means to a very violent end.

Looking up at Papa, I saw him viewing the ogling crowd with slight disdain before he ushered us both into the building.

The atmosphere was a little more relaxed within the Academy's main building, and I recognised several clan symbols emblazoned on the garments of parents and children alike. The Yūhi family was not considered a clan, so we didn't have a clan symbol, although my father had often spoken of what it would look like if we ever did become a clan. He was particularly torn between an emblem depicting either a sakura blossom tree, or the red evening sky. He held a fondness for both.

Kurenai was named after the latter, after all.

Kurenai had once whispered to me that mother was originally from a shinobi clan, though she didn't know which one and Mama had refused to talk about it when I'd approached her on the subject.

The Academy was a tidy place, but it was in no way clean. Gouges and scratches and scuffmarks were rampant on the floor as well as some of the walls, and dirt had been tracked everywhere. However, I suppose it was to be expected when you handed excitable children sharp knives and told them that they were going to become ninja. My gaze was drawn upwards. _At least it is tidy_, I thought. _There is nothing to trip—_

—_How on earth did scuffmarks get on the ceiling?_

Father and mother didn't waste any time standing in the doorway and made a beeline for old acquaintances whose children were to be my classmates. Most of them were clan-born but there were also a few civilian-born shinobi that Papa respected whose children would be starting with me at the Academy. I wasn't sure how to act around either of them. I would give a half-hearted wave, a strained smile and subtly tug on Papa's pant leg to take us elsewhere.

I wished that Kurenai were here, instead she was out on a training exercise at one of the training grounds with her class. It would've been nice to have her here.

"Kurei-san!" A voice called from somewhere behind us. "Kurei!"

We turned. A man around Papa's age with long white-grey hair tied into a simple ponytail stepped out from behind a teary civilian family and made his way towards us. I glanced up at Papa, he was grinning at the man widely. I stepped behind his leg so that I was out of sight.

"Sakumo," Father greeted, and they clasped hands like old friends. Perhaps they were old friends, seeing as Papa had greeted him without honorific. Though I certainly had no real clue; Papa made every effort to leave missions and his work out of his personal life. Though the name "Sakumo" _did_ ring a bell, perhaps my father had mentioned him at some stage.

"Ah, Kagura-san. You look as lovely as ever." Mother had the decency to blush.

"It's good to see you again, Sakumo-kun," Mama stated with genuine warmness. "You should come join us for dinner some time. It feels like we haven't seen each other since…" Mother trailed off, her smile fading and she bites her lip as if she's said something that she shouldn't have.

But whether she has or hasn't is apparently irrelevant as Sakumo keeps his friendly smile and genuinely, "I'd very much like that. Could I bring my son as well? I'd like him to meet his mother's best friend."

Mother's eyes glistened and she looked like she was about to cry, which was odd. I'd never seen a grown-up cry before. The prospect unnerved me. "Of course," Mama said softly. "He is welcome anytime."

Sakumo nodded before he turned back to my father. "What brings you here, my friend?" Sakumo asked.

Yep, they were friends all right.

"My youngest starts her first day today," Papa said, and I beamed at the trace of pride in his voice. He was proud of me. I wouldn't let him down.

Sakumo's eyes drifted down to where I was peeking out from behind Papa's leg at him with wide eyes. He chuckled, giving me a warm smile as he squatted down in front of me.

"Hello there," he said.

"…Hi." I gave him a small smile and, grasping onto my courage, stepped out from behind Papa's leg and held out my small hand towards him. "My name is Ayaka."

His laugh was deep and loud and I found myself entranced by the sound. I liked the sound of it. I liked him. He shook my hand gently and I could practically feel the power and dexterity underneath the callouses on his palm and fingers. He could easily have broken my wrist with just a thought and twist of his hand. I liked how very aware of his power he was, of his restraint; he was being careful not to accidentally hurt me.

"Oh, I know who you are, Ayaka-chan. Your tou-san never stops talking about you." I must have looked slightly panicky because he quickly adds in a conspiratorial whisper, "All good things, I assure you."

I beamed at him. Then I beamed at Papa.

Sakumo stood and the conversation drifted away from me to Kurenai, then to old training grounds and exercises that they used to use when they were at the Academy.

"And how is your son, Sakumo-kun?" Mama enquired.

"Ah, yes. He's the reason I'm here today, actually."

"Is he starting at the Academy too?" I asked hopefully. I'd very much like to meet the son of a man as nice as Sakumo.

"Well, actually…" He rubbed the back of his head, looking slightly self-conscious as he gives us a small smile. "I'm here to speak to the Hokage about him. Hokage-sama wishes to promote him to chūnin; apparently he's made quite a splash compared to the other genin."

Father's eyebrows rose in surprise, although it was Mama who spoke first. "But isn't he only a year or two older than Ayaka? A year younger than our Kurenai?"

Sakumo nodded. "Yes, he's only six years old – nearly seven. They want me to be present for when he signs the paperwork and waiver forms for the more dangerous missions he'll be taking as a chūnin. So the jōnin think it best if I am present when he signs it; in case he doesn't understand the seriousness of what he's signing. But I have full faith in my boy – he understands what he's getting into. He started at the Academy when he was just four years old, and the Hokage thinks that he's ready to make chūnin. No ordinary six year old makes chūnin." It's not hard to hear and envy the devotion and adoration present in Sakumo's words about his son. His son was only a year older than me and already was being promoted to chūnin. It was a little disheartening. I had been proud when Mama told me that only the advanced children get into the Academy before the age of six, and here I was starting at five years old.

He must really be something special.

"Congratulations, Sakumo. Just like a chip off the old block, eh? You must be very proud of him."

"Everyone! The morning tea has now finished." A young man – likely a chūnin teacher at the Academy – called loudly over the sea of parents and children, interrupting any reply Sakumo could voice. He stood at the front of the room, his eyes dark and an expression of lazy indifference upon his face. The families outside must have joined us inside the building at some point because I noticed that the room is filled with people. You couldn't even walk two steps without bumping into someone. "Could the children please follow me so that we can begin getting them settled into their classes." Although it was phrased like a question, it was spoken in a tone that was not to be brokered with.

Without another word, he spun on his heel and marched through a door on the opposite side of the room.

Giving Mama and Papa a quick hug and a wave to Sakumo, I darted through the crowd, blending into the group of kids making their way towards the door.

The chūnin led us up a flight of stairs into an empty classroom. There were not enough seats in the classroom for us all to sit down; so many of us had to stand. By the time all the stragglers had made their way into the classroom my feet were aching and I was seriously considering squeezing in between the two boys on the bench in front of me just so that I could get off my feet. But I stayed put; Papa would have been disappointed if he found out that I was getting tired from just standing still – even if it had been almost half an hour.

"Alright, it seems like everyone is here now." The chūnin who had led us into the room said. "My name is Takahata and I am one of the teachers at the Academy."

_One of…?_

I looked around and almost jumped. Several chūnin-level shinobi were situated around the room and I hadn't heard them enter. The closest one was not even two metres away from me. I may not have been paying attention – Papa would tear through me if I ever admitted that to him – but I should have been able to hear the shuffle of footsteps or clothing or _anything_. I guess this is just what it means to be a shinobi.

I heard several students gasp as they too noticed the shinobi surrounding them; some even jumped to their feet yelping. It was slightly disheartening, although not entirely unexpected, to see that they were mostly civilian-born students. A dark-haired civilian boy actually tripped over, knocking over a desk and sending another group of students scrambling about.

I turned my attention back to the chūnin, Takahata. His lips twitched but that was as far to a smile as he seemed to allow.

He cleared his throat, earning the attention of the room again. "If we're quite finished here, I would like to move on," he said, giving a flat stare to the dark haired boy, who cringed and turned a bright shade of pink. "Let me be very clear about one thing before you begin your time at the Academy. It will be hard work. And nothing is guaranteed. Even for the clan-born students, I've seen many cocky clan-born students who think that they are the cream of the crop just because of the emblem on their clothes. Let me be very clear about another thing – I will not tolerate arseholes." There was a collective intake of breath from the kids around me at his cuss, and I heard the chūnin behind me tut his disapproval at Takahata.

But I liked him immediately.

"In this way, the Academy is fair to all its students. We do not have favourites besides those that work hard and aim to serve the village with their very lives. As I said earlier – this will not be easy, and I expect that not even a third of you brats will last to graduation."

_Brats?_ It seemed a little harsh but I liked his blunt "no-nonsense" attitude; it was very different from the understanding and caring approach that Iruka Umino would take with his future stude—wait, _future students? Iruka Umino?_ A heavy fog seemed to descend over my mind and I struggled to retain my train of thought. It had had something to do with my past life, some half forgotten memory that prodded around the back of my head but was as hard to get a hold of as someone grasping at steam.

I let the issue go and the stifling blanket of fog abruptly lifted, bringing my thoughts back into crisp clarity.

How odd.

I glanced around, half-expecting half-wondering if the fog was some sort of genjutsu that everyone – not just myself – had fallen under. It didn't seem to be so. They were all looking forward, giving Takahata-sensei all of their attention. Just like I should be doing now.

Takahata-sensei talked only for a little while longer, but in that short space of time insulted us in so large a variety of ways that I was making a game of picking up on them. We were up to twenty-two insults so far – which included name-calling such as "brats", "imps", or – my personal favourite – "cocky shits". Finally, he reached the end of his speech and just by looking at the chūnin around the room I could tell that about half were annoyed by Takahata's rudeness, whilst the other half were amused. I wondered if the teachers at the Academy were conscripted to take up this job, it would certainly explain why Takahata and some of the other chūnin were so seemingly averse to teaching us.

"Alright, dipshits. This is how it's going to work."

_Twenty-three._

"You're going to be divvied up into four classes. We have class lists already so we'll be calling out names. These classes will likely merge together at some stage in the future when most of you hopeless cases-" _Twenty-four_ "-drop out and the class' size get too small to continue as a separate class. So listen close, because if you walk into the wrong class we'll kick you out of the Academy."

He had to be joking… right?

Three other chūnin stepped forward, a scroll in their hands and Takahata himself produced a scroll from his kunai pouch. They began speaking names all at once, four name's said at the same time and although it was hard to keep track of the names being said, it was even harder trying to determine which chūnin had said which name because they didn't pause or repeat any of the names again. They also didn't seem to be in any particular order – alphabetical or otherwise.

"Yūhi Ayaka!"

I jumped from where I had been leaning against the wall and looked around but the name – my name – had already slipped away and others were already replacing it. I looked around at the chūnin but they were reading straight off of their scrolls, eyes downcast and personalities unapproachable.

I had missed it. I had no idea which chūnin had said my name. It could have come from the front of the room – from Takahata – but I hadn't recognised the voice. Though that could just as likely be attributed to the fact that there were several people talking at once. I felt sick to the stomach. I had missed it. I had been unprepared – Papa would be disappointed in me. As would Mama. I had let them both down within the first five minutes of being at the Academy.

No. No no no no no. Stay calm. I had to stay calm and focus. How could I figure out which class I was in? Asking the chūnin was out of the question. I could ask another student but I doubted that they would be able to hear their own name, let alone remember which chūnin had spoken mine. So what did that leave me with?

Father's voice echoed through my head: _When one cannot obtain information through subtle means – gossip, rumours and the like – a shinobi must extract the information himself. Through less than subtle means. Seduction, torture, espionage, reconnaissance – these are the true tools of a shinobi, more so than any blade or poison._

_Reconnaissance_…

I shifted quickly between the press of academy student bodies, making my way towards the nearest chūnin. I would just have to have a look at his list if I couldn't find out through other means. The chūnin in general didn't seem to be specifically on guard; in fact _they_ seemed to be the cocky ones. But whatever. If the chūnin wanted to underestimate us – I was fine with that.

I flitted from chūnin to chūnin, checking each of their lists until I finally began to read the last list of students; just as I'd expected, I found my name on this list easily somewhere near the top and sticking out like a sore thumb just as the chūnin finished calling out names.

I was in Takahata's class.

Good Lord. I liked him well enough but I was sure that he'd caught me looking at least one of the other chūnin's lists. I just hoped he wouldn't kick me out for it. Hopefully he'd seen it for what it was – a shinobi using their head to gather critical information.

Either I'd stand out among my fellow classmates if he liked what I had done. Or I wouldn't stand among them at all.

The latter was _not_ an option.

_Boom!_

The wall near us imploded, raining mortar and plaster and dust into the room. The chūnin wasted no time in whipping out their kunai and ushering my fellow classmates to the opposite side of the room. The wall had been reduced to nothing more than rubble. Was this an attack?

I could make out a single silhouette in the slowly calming cloud of debris and plaster dust that obscured our view of the enemy. They must be pretty stupid to target the Academy – that or they were targeting the weak. What a coward.

Well, they were in for a surprise. I could already see the clan-born kids stepping into various offensive and defensive stances, anticipating a fight. Except that they were all safely at the back of the room and I was not. I had been behind Takahata – standing closest to the wall that was now no more.

The silhouette moved – stepping into the room.

I snatched a pen and threw it at the figure, like I had been trained to do with kunai or senbon.

"Hey bitches! I am Anko Mitarashi, the sexy—Gah!" The little girl about my own age dived to the side to avoid the pen that had been thrown at her. It flew past her ear, her quick dive making the pen miss her by only a few centimetres.

Oh. My. God.

I had nearly just killed Anko Mitarashi.

"Who the hell threw that?!" Anko glared as she made her way back up to her feet. Her glare landed on me and I felt my face flush under her scrutiny. Perhaps leaping straight into battle with _Anko Mitarashi_ of all people wasn't the best decision I could have made my first day at the Academy.

The punch came out of nowhere and clipped me under the chin before I could dart out of the way. My jaw stung from the impact as I backed up a few steps. No, she did _not_ just punch me in the jaw. I opened and closed my mouth a few times like a goldfish, trying to work the pain out of my chin.

Anko darted closer again and I moved into a sweeping kick, knocking her feet out from under her. She landed on the floor with a loud _oomph_.

Dear God. I must have a death wish. Perhaps dying once had made me reckless? Whatever it was, knocking Anko to the ground would not end well for me.

"That's enough, girls." I turned. Takahata was standing over both of us with an indecipherable expression on his face. "Anko Mitarashi, yes?" He asked, turning to Anko.

"Yessir!" She replied, clambering to her feet once more.

"You're in my class. And you." He turned to me. "What's your name?"

"A-Ayaka Yūhi."

"You're in my class too… Good." Wait… was that a smile that flickered onto his face? "Both of you follow me. The rest of my class, follow me also to our classroom! Anyone who gets it wrong is expelled from the Academy!"

We marched through a pair of doors opposite to the wall that Anko had smashed through. How on earth had she broken through that wall though?

Anko and I walked in silence directly behind Takahata-sensei. I felt flustered and nervous. Anko must hate me. God, I was probably on her shit list now. Did that mean I would be on Orochimaru's shit list too?

My life was so over. I tried not to cry.

"I like you."

My head whipped to face Anko so fast that my chin and jaw ached and my neck cracked.

"W-what?" I stuttered out.

"You're pretty cool. You've got some sweet moves." Anko's face broke out into a grin and she held out her fist towards me. What was she doing? What should I do? Was she asking me to fist bump her?

Tentatively, I clenched my fist and touched it lightly to hers. Grinning, Anko jabbed her fist forward and our fists collided with a sharp crack.

_Goddamnit! _I nearly howled. _Don't cry. Don't you dare cry! She did that on purpose!_

But when I looked at Anko I couldn't see any sort of malevolence in her eyes, only her grin and the way that she stood closer to me suddenly. And just like that – _just like that_ – I knew that she considered us best friends.

And, oddly enough, I found that I was completely okay with that.

* * *

**A/N: I've seen other fan fiction authors do this so I thought I might give it a try.**

**Information about the author and other useless stuff:**

**If you're ever homeless, spend money on a 24-hour gym membership. You'll have a place to go every night, with showers, etc.**

**I literally cried when reading Sakura's fight scenes in the Fourth Shinobi War. I'll say no more on it.**

**I'm a university student. I've just changed from Biomedical Science to just a regular Science degree.**

**The first swear word I learnt was "crap" when I was eight.**

**I'm a guy.**

**The longest place name in the world is Taumatawhakatangihangako-auauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu located in New Zealand.**

**Please review!**


	3. Tea Parties and Other Deadly Things

_**A/N: **__Hello again, readers. Here is the next instalment of Depth. Sorry for the wait. I had meant to update last week but I caught a bout of the flu so I was bedridden and I wasn't going to update until chapter 4 was well under way – which it is now (hopefully it'll be finished either today or tomorrow). However, the next update still won't be until next week._

_Some of you mentioned developing Ayaka's character out a bit more and, to be honest, there was supposed to be another chapter between 1 and 2 that expanded upon her relationship between Ayaka and her parents and sister but it just wasn't coming out right. So I scrapped it._

_Thank you everyone who has favourite, followed and – especially – reviewed. It's so exciting getting email notifications that someone has reviewed/etc. _XD

_So without further ado, I present to you~ (omg that rhymed, I'm a poet, and I didn't even know it) _;) _This is my longest chapter yet._

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of the Canon characters that we all know and love. That pleasure belongs to one Masashi Kishimoto.**

* * *

Chapter 3: Tea Parties and Other Deadly Things

It turns out that Takahata-sensei didn't _actually_ have the authority to expel students from the Academy, it seemed like he just liked to mess with our heads. He also made it very clear that should he ever wield the power to throw students out of the Academy, he'd take great delight in abusing it to the fullest extent.

By this stage I was positive that the job of teaching at the Academy had to have been through some sort of conscription – or perhaps punishment. I made a mental note to ask Papa later. There was no way that Takahata-sensei would have volunteered for this sort of a job. He made frequent references to his lousy pay.

It seemed that that much wasn't different between this world and my old one.

I wondered if he'd ever heard the saying "if you're no good at it, teach it". I'm sure he would tear through anyone who would say that to his face.

I couldn't help it. I giggled.

Anko, who was sitting next to me in class, gave me a curious look but I waved her off. Now was definitely not the time to explain something to Anko. Takahata-sensei was at the front of the class teaching us the fundamentals such as the concept of chakra, chakra coils and the various types of jutsu that ninja used.

"Yūhi-chan." Takahata-sensei was suddenly bearing down on me and I realised that perhaps it hadn't been the best idea to sit in the front row.

"Hai!" I shot to my feet, nearly knocking over my chair in my haste.

"Perhaps you would like to share with the class what you find so funny?"

_Not on my life_.

"A-ano…"

"Yes?"

"I-it was n-nothing, sensei!" I was sure that I was flushing a deep red but he kept me pinned with his gaze, eyeing me closely.

"Sit back down and pay attention." He relinquished with a sigh, moving back to the board at the front of our classroom. "Now, which of you little dickheads know how many tenketsu the human body has…?"

I sat down back down. I felt Anko nudge me and I glanced at her. She gave me a pointed look, and then looked at Takahata-sensei, then back at me, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

No…

She couldn't be insinuating…

That was just wrong—he could get in a lot of trouble—how could she just—had she no shame?

Was she even really aware of what she was implying? By the lewd grin on her face, I'd have to say yes, Anko Mitarashi knew exactly what she insinuating.

It didn't help that I blushed a deep red again. I was five years old, for Christ's sake!

* * *

After Takahata-sensei's class, Anko and I made our way to our kunoichi training lessons, which were usually held in either a small pretty training ground not far from Konoha's gates, or – on rainy days – inside a regular Academy classroom. On those wet days, the most fun we had was scouting out empty classrooms for our class to use and reporting them back to our teacher. Then we'd have a tea ceremony, where our teacher would talk us through the proper ways to prepare tea and who was to serve it in various scenarios.

On sunny days, we'd go to our little training ground and pick wild flowers to arrange into artful bouquets. I didn't see any particular usefulness for this skill. It wasn't like there would ever be a scenario where a rogue ninja was holding a kunai to your throat and would kill you unless you made him the most beautiful flower bouquet in the world.

It was, to be honest, a little sexist to make all the prospective kunoichi take these classes whilst the boys got the free time to train, wrestle, or do whatever else boys did when they weren't being annoying. And if it weren't for the in depth details we were getting about poisons and how to ascertain which mushrooms were safe to eat and which plants could be mixed together to make an effective poultice for wounds, I would have complained to Papa a long time ago.

But Anko loved the tea ceremonies.

And I loved learning how best to slip a poison into those tea ceremonies.

So although we both hated arranging flowers into bouquets, we decided that we'd both just have to put up with it.

"Hey Anko-san."

"Mmm?"

"I keep meaning to ask you; how did you get smash through the Academy classroom wall the first day that we started at the Academy?" I had been meaning to ask her for a while, ever since we'd first become friends all those weeks ago.

"Paper bombs."

Oh. Well that made a lot of sense.

"How did you get your hands on _those_? We're not even allowed to even touch real kunai at the Academy, let alone a _paper bomb_."

"Paper bomb_s._ I had meh. I stole them off some genin punk who was swaggering around Konoha like he owned the place."

I stared at her. This was Anko's logic – if she thought someone to be too cocky or stuck-up, then she took it upon herself to give that person her personal brand of retribution.

"Wow…"

"Yup."

There was a short pause in our conversation as we approached the other group of girls standing in the clearing for our kunoichi classes.

"You're so cool, Anko-san."

"You're pretty sexy yourself."

* * *

I made my own way home after those classes. I had split up from Anko after we had reached her apartment building. Our kunoichi sensei insisted that we spend the afternoon picking wildflowers and arranging them into bouquets – _again _– to take back home with us and give to our families. Anko had taken to plucking the petals off of her flowers on the walk home and so by the time we'd passed through the market district, her bouquet was nothing more than a bunch of green stalks clasped in her hand.

She'd thrown them away shortly afterwards, where they accidentally smacked an old lady in the face. We spent the next hour trying to evade the surprisingly spritely old lady's attempts to bring us to justice.

And during all that running around and hiding from irate old women, I _still_ had my sad bouquet of flowers clutched tightly in my hand.

"Ayaka-chan!" The greeting came from above and I had just enough time to take a hesitant step backwards as Sakumo Hatake landed in front of me.

He looked great for a man who would be dead within the next few years.

Wait—_what?_

Sakumo wasn't going to die. Where had _that_ thought come from? He was supposed to be as strong as the sannin. Who on earth could kill such a great shinobi?

A series of images flashed through my head. Eyes narrowed with judgement, an isolated figure, a silver blade, a dark shape collapsed on bloodstained tatami mats…

No… This was from my old life. These images – memories – belonged to me. Was this Sakumo's sad fate? No, I couldn't let it end for him like this. It was unacceptable. I must have been born into this world for a reason; perhaps this reason was to help save lives. Lives like Sakumo's.

"Hello? Ayaka-chan? Please say something. Your dad will kill me if I've frightened you to death."

_Sakumo_.

I snapped to attention. "Ah! Hatake-sama! Good evening! Did you need something?"

He chuckled. "Always so polite. I suppose I shouldn't expect anything different from the kids of a stiff-neck like Kurei. I was actually on my way to your home when I spotted you. And please, call me Sakumo."

"H-hai, Sakumo-sama!"

"No, I mean just call me Sa… Ah, nevermind. So what's a little squirt like you doing out so late? The Academy should have finished ages ago." He began walking in the direction to my home and I had to suddenly jog to keep up with him.

"Ano… I had my kunoichi classes today."

"Ah, so that's why you're carrying around flowers," Sakumo said, gesturing to the bouquet in my hand. "They look quite… um… original."

I glared at the badly presented bouquet and the sorry state of the flowers themselves. Ibara had snatched the bouquet out of my hand and had kicked it like a ball until Anko had come and discouraged the mean-spirited little girl with a punch to the face.

I won't lie, it had felt good to see. Really, really good.

"You don't have to lie, Sakumo-sama. They look terrible." I deadpanned.

"Well, not _terrible_-terrible. Maybe more like an original-terrible. An original-terrible-beauty. I'm sure that all the other girls in your class can't make a flower arrangement into a representation of such terrible beauty. It's an art-form, really." He made it seem like he was paying me a complement, but it was almost like he was only succeeding in digging upwards. Sakumo kept talking and talking, and I'm sure that even he was aware that his rambling sentences weren't getting him anywhere. To be frank, if I even cared in the slightest about my bouquet, I might have been a little offended by some of the ill-thought-out complements he was paying me.

"…but they're really quite—"

"Sakumo-sama."

"—Yes?"

"You can stop talking now."

His eyes crinkled as he gave me an apologetic smile. "Sure."

We continued walking, neither of us paying attention to the food stalls and the cacophony of raucous vendors shouting out offers for the various goods they sold in the hopes of luring in prospective clientele. Usually I was hassled a bit more when I walked through this part of the market district, but with Sakumo – with hitai-ate, flak-jacket and the kunai he was idly twirling around his index finger – no one seemed to want to catch our attention, much less approach us.

It was handy. Although that it wouldn't be helpful when he was trying to do his shopping.

"Why, exactly, are you coming to our house, Sakumo-sama?" I asked, and then winced. I hadn't meant for my words to come out so direct and accusatory.

"Didn't your parents tell you? My son and I are having dinner at your home tonight." He smiled warmly at me. "It's been a while since we've had a home cooked meal."

"Your son?" I vaguely remembered that the first time I had met Sakumo he had mentioned that he had had a son. "He's a chūnin now, isn't he? I remember you mentioning that he was being promoted when we spoke on my first day at the Academy."

"That's right." Sakumo's eyes practically glowed with pride.

"Where is he now?" I looked around us as if expecting Sakumo's son to appear out of thin air.

"He's been going on a lot of missions lately. The amount of missions he's been doing is phenomenal. He barely has a moment to sit still before he's off on another mission."

"And that… doesn't make you happy?" I enquired. Sakumo's face had darkened and his eyes had fallen downcast in reverie as he had spoken and I could make out a trace of – worry? Sadness? – in his voice that pulled at my heartstrings.

_He wants to spend more time with his son._

But when Sakumo looked up again that dark expression had lifted from his features, and his face was back to neutral.

He didn't get the chance to answer my question because, at that moment, we had reached my front door and Kurenai had come out in a flash, bounding into me.

"Mama is opening up a teahouse!" She crowed, hugging me as she jumped up and down.

_What?_

"Nee-san – what? Mama is… Why would Mama open up a teahouse…?" I trailed off, rationally assessing the situation.

Mama was a stay-at-home mother. She was always there – she had to be if she wanted to look after us herself and not hire a babysitter or child day-care services. Mama wasn't a fan of either, apparently. But now that Kurenai and I were at the Academy most days of the week, I suppose that she no longer had to stay at home. She _could_ return to the workforce. I knew that. I did. I had thought about it before, during the times that I noticed that she was getting restless at home. Though I had always just assumed that she would return to working as a kunoichi. I had heard stories of mothers that were so hell-bent on getting back into shinobi work that they'd leave for mission's just days after giving birth to their baby.

But never had I ever had an inkling that Mama was thinking about opening her own teahouse. From a kunoichi, to a mother, then to become a teahouse owner… it quite a bit of a jump. Although, I supposed that if the Yamanaka's could own a flower shop, why couldn't the Yūhi's own a teahouse?

It didn't seem so farfetched when I put it like that. So I laughed and jumped around hugging Kurenai and tried not to think about how… _ecstatic _Anko would be once she heard the news. It was only after a short moment that Kurenai realised that I wasn't alone and, blushing furiously, invited Sakumo inside.

I followed Kurenai and Sakumo into the dining area where we could see Mama bustling around the adjoining kitchen. I ran to her, hugging her tight, letting her know my excitement about her plans. And I _was_ excited. What better way was there to practice slipping poisons into tea than in a teahouse?

Mama greeted Sakumo brightly before ushering him outside to where Papa apparently was sharpening his kunai in the shed towards the back of our property.

I held out my bouquet towards Mama. "Kaa-san, these are for you."

"Oh my," Mama breathed, looking at the bouquet from various angles. "What an… _original_ design."

I saw Sakumo give me a pointed look before slid the door closed and leave to find Papa.

"I hate kunoichi class," I grumbled.

"But it's so _easy_," Kurenai burst out. "It's pretty much just free time."

"No. It's a _waste _of free time." I griped. "All the boys get to go do whatever they want – eat dango, train, study – but we have to do stupid pointless things. Like collecting flowers and making tea! How is tea making supposed to help me in the middle of a fight?"

"Maybe you _throw_ the tea at them…" Kurenai giggled.

I glared at her.

"Now, now, Ayaka-chan." Mama said patiently, turning back to the oven where she was turning over the saury she was grilling for dinner. _Saury? We never have saury?_ "Your kunoichi lessons aren't supposed to be about fighting head on. They're used for teaching you skills that a civilian would know."

"Why do we have to learn civilian skills, Kaa-san?" Kurenai asked, standing beside me as Mama continued to bustle around the kitchen.

"They come in handy in missions where seduction and espionage is required.

If the enemy were able to tell that a kunoichi from an enemy village was snooping around their business then you would be an easy target to eliminate. But disguise yourself as a civilian working in a flower shop or for a teahouse and…" Mama trailed off, leaving us to draw up our own conclusions.

"And…" Kurenai began. "And then you're disguised as an ordinary person!"

"Exactly," Mama praised. "And why would we want to be able to be disguised as an ordinary person?"

I had this one. "So that we blend in and are above suspicion."

"Correct," she praised once again. "You'll find that often women are weaker than men. Even most kunoichi are physically weaker than male shinobi." At our scandalised looks she quickly added, "Although, we are also more likely to be underestimated, which, in itself, is more than capable of allowing us to win in a fight."

Mama looked upwards and smiled at someone standing in the doorway. Kurenai and I whirled around to find both Sakumo and Papa standing in the entryway to the kitchen, both looking amused at our reaction to their silent approach.

"You should have seen how badly your mother used to beat me into the ground," Papa said, moving forward and kissing Mama. "But, of course, I won in the end."

Kurenai and I gaped at him. Mama had beaten Papa _that_ badly? It was impossible to contemplate; Papa was such a strong shinobi and Mama was… was, well, was bustling around the kitchen in a faded floral apron. I could never imagine that the woman making us dinner – who had always made us dinner – could beat up a jōnin like Papa.

And suddenly, Mama's point about being able to blend in with civilian skills made sense.

"You were such a sore loser, Kurei." Mama said, her eyes fluttering coquettishly, her smile turning a little too sharp.

Wait. Were they… _flirting?_

"OH MY GOD! MY EYES! THEY'RE BURNING! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!" I howled clutching at my eyes while Kurenai made small gagging sounds. I stumbled up to Sakumo and clutched onto his leg tightly. "Take me away from here!" I begged. "Don't make me live with… with these _people_!"

"Oh, stop being such a drama queen," Mama admonished whilst Sakumo howled with laughter, bending over forwards and putting his hands on his knees. He's laughter continued for several seconds before they faded into chuckles and hiccups. Seeing me still clinging to his leg, Sakumo scooped me up and sat me on his shoulder, chuckling softly.

I felt like a queen gazing down at her subjects. I grinned down at Kurenai's pouting, envious face.

"How's the view from up there, Ayaka-hime?" Sakumo asked.

I looked at Kurenai pouting and my parents' grins before replying that it was – in my most pompous take of Grandmama's voice – "adequate".

Everyone laughed again.

"You sound like Baa-san!" Kurenai called.

Papa glared at her.

"Father…"

We all started at the voice coming from behind Sakumo and I. Sakumo turned so quickly that I nearly fell off his shoulder.

A boy around Kurenai's age stood at our open backdoor, in easy view of the antics going on in the kitchen and dining room. He stood only a little taller than Kurenai did but had a shock of silver-grey hair on his head and a mask from his uniform stretched over the lower half of his face.

And without ever seeing this boy before I knew exactly who he was. Although the colour of his hair was a dead giveaway, I felt like I knew him from somewhere. I couldn't shake the feeling that I knew him very, very well.

But, of course, that would be ridiculous.

"Kakashi…" Sakumo said, the smile slipping from his face. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable sitting on Sakumo's shoulder as the boy's – Kakashi's – dark expressionless eyes slid over from his father to me then back again. Even I, the least trained shinobi in the room, could tell that he was noting down and processing everything he saw. In that one moment of silence I felt every little thing about me – every nervous tick and out-of-place hair – being evaluated.

I didn't even notice that I was shuffling uncomfortably on Sakumo's shoulder until he lifted me again and deposited me on the ground.

Sakumo cleared his throat and moved towards Kakashi, before turning to face my parents. "Kurei, Kagura-san. This is my son, Kakashi. Kakashi, this Kurei and Kagura-san, and their daughters Kurenai-chan and Ayaka-_hime_." He added the honorific to my name in a painfully obvious attempt to lighten the mood.

Suddenly nervous, I shuffled forward to meet the boy. This was Sakumo's son, and I had promised myself that I would make friends with him as best I could.

I smiled at him broadly. "Hi, I'm Ayaka. Sakumo-sama has told me so much about you, Kakashi-kun," I introduced, proffering my hand out to him. I waited for him to reply and shake my hand… For him to smile and say that it was a pleasure to meet me too. That Sakumo had spoken of me also. That he'd been looking forward to becoming friends with me.

And waited…

And waited…

Had I been too overly familiar by calling him Kakashi-_kun_? Perhaps I should have started with Kakashi-_san_, instead? Or maybe I should have just gone completely formal with _Hatake-san_? And why was he just staring at me?

For an uncomfortably long moment my hand just stayed held out in front of me and susceptible to Kakashi's gaze and judgement where he was staring down at my proffered hand.

I managed to catch his gaze and a flash of intense dislike cross his feature. It surprised me so much so that I stumbled back a step.

My hand fell.

"Kakashi!" Sakumo scolded harshly. "What's gotten into you?"

Kakashi turned to his father, his face blank. "Forgive me, Father. I don't feel well. I don't want to spoil your evening so I'll go."

"Wait," Mama said, moving forward quickly. "You're welcome to stay. I'm making salt-broiled saury, your father tells me it's your—"

"Kakashi, you're not going anywhere," Sakumo commanded, placing a restricting hand on Kakashi's shoulder. "You're going to apologise to Ayaka here, as well as to Kagura-san and Kurei for your rudeness inside their home."

Kakashi looked at the floor and scuffed his feet uncomfortably.

Mama opened her mouth. "Sakumo-san, an apology isn't—"

"—_Is_ entirely necessary, Kagura," Papa cut in. He was looking down at Kakashi quietly, his anger only evident in his eyes and the puckering corners of his lips. It gave me shivers. The last time I had seen him this mad was when I had graphitied his bingo book by drawing devil horns, moustaches and lipstick over the faces of most of the criminals in it. I had thought it hilarious at the time, though after the punishment that had followed, I would not be hurrying to do _that_ again.

Papa turned away from Mama to face Kakashi. "You were invited into _my_ house, where _my_ wife was preparing your favourite dish for dinner, and have the audacity to insult _my_ daughter under _my _own roof! I'm sorry, Sakumo, but I feel like your son _does_ owe my family an apology for his rude behaviour in the sixty seconds that he's been on my property."

I turned to Papa horrified. I didn't _want_ Kakashi to apologise to me; I just wanted to be friends. You couldn't force a friendship.

"No – no. I agree Kurei. I'm sorry that your wife went to so much trouble for my son," Sakumo said.

"Oh no, Sakumo-san! It was no trouble!" Mama protested.

"I apologise for my misconduct, everyone." Everyone's eyes fell on Kakashi, and he swallowed audibly. He scuffed his foot again nervously before stepping in front of me and offering his hand to me. "I'm sorry for my rudeness, Yūhi-san."

I hesitated a heartbeat before grasping his hand in mine. "You can just call me Ayaka," I said; glad to have the awkward tension broken. But his body language spoke volumes. He remained indifferent and although his tone was polite it held only mild disinterest.

He was uncomfortable.

Papa gave Kakashi one final glare before relenting. "Okay. Now that that's over, who wants to help me set the table? I'm guessing the saury is nearly finished, Kagura?"

Mama's face fell. "The saury!" She raced back into the kitchen and, as she opened the oven, the smell of our burnt dinner reached my nose. An awkward silence fell over the room and Kakashi shifted uncomfortably in front of me.

After a moment, Mama came out of the kitchen, smiling brightly.

Both Sakumo and Papa tensed at the fake brightness of her smile.

"Is… everything alright, Honey?" Papa started cautiously.

Mama turned him and he took a step back. "Of course!" She grinned. "Most of the saury will be fine. You, however, and Ayaka-chan will have to undergo some endurance training during dinner tonight."

Papa vainly tried not to wince.

"What?" I burst out. "What did I do wrong?"

Mama head rotated slowly to look at me and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end in response. Her grin had suddenly turned sadistic.

"Ah. Kurei." Sakumo said, lifting a hand to cover the small smile adorning his face. I glared at him. "I was actually hoping to see Kurenai undergo some training. You've already said that she has a natural aptitude for genjutsu, and I've heard that her taijutsu techniques are flawless." He smiled at Kurenai, who ducked her head and blushed faintly.

"Sure, we'll go outside." Papa said, shepherding us all away from Mama. "Kurenai does have a natural aptitude for genjutsu. It's nothing short of amazing, how she has been able to pick up techniques so well."

We assembled in the small clearing in backyard where Kurenai and I usually performed our morning exercises and katas.

"Otou-san!" I dashed forward and glomped his leg. "Can I join in too?"

"Yeah!" Kurenai agreed, jumping onto Papa's other leg.

Papa frowned. "I don't think that that's a—"

"Why not?" Kurenai pouted, letting go of Papa's leg she put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. "I could use a partner. And Ayaka's not _that_ far behind me. She started at the Academy a year earlier than I did!"

He looked down at me and I gazed up at him, giving him my best puppy-dog look. I added in a quivering bottom lip for extra effect.

"C'mon, Kurei," Sakumo laughed. "The girls seem determined."

Kakashi remained silent next to his father, watching.

When Papa sighed through his nose I knew that we had won. "Alright. A single spar. _Taijutsu only, Kurenai_. Your sister doesn't know much else besides that." He turned to me. "Ayaka, don't be discouraged if you're beaten, okay? There's no shame in losing to your sister – she's had a lot more training than you. Just remember—"

"—Whoever loses gets kicked out of the family and has to live in shame forever!" Mama cheered from the kitchen window.

"You're not helping, Kagura!"

"Love you too, darling!"

"Ignore your mother, Ayaka," Papa said, sounding only a little exasperated. "What I was going to say was – remember how to dodge."

I nodded and excitedly clapped hands with my sister.

Papa looked between the two of us. "Taijutsu only."

Kurenai rolled her eyes. "We _know_, Otou-san. We heard you the first time."

Kurenai and I backed up from each other before we both slid into mirror image stances, our feet shoulder-width apart and our arms lifted to guard our faces. We stood like that, making eye contact, and then I blinked and Kurenai was moving forward, her leg rising to present a high-roundhouse kick to my head.

I hit the ground and rolled out of the way, quickly clambering back to me feet.

Kurenai was already rushing at me again.

I blocked her right cross with my shoulder and followed up with a quick jab that would have smacked into her nose had she not quickly backed up.

Her guard opened up as her arms spread too wide.

Pressing the offensive, I darted forward and landed a snap kick straight to her chest.

She fell backwards onto her back but swept a leg out and took me down with her. I landed on my tailbone. Hard. I needed to go over my falls with Papa once this was over.

Kurenai was back on her feet in a flash and I found that I was still struggling to get my feet beneath me. Her snap kick sent me sprawling backwards into the grass again.

I stayed down. I was panting and perspiring slightly, though not from exertion. If anything I felt full to the brim with energy. But before I could even attempt to get up, Kurenai was above me, her leg raised to deliver a devastating axe kick. Her form was perfect, I'm sure Papa was proud of her.

Unlike me.

I loved my sister dearly, but I was envious of everything she had that I did not. She was Papa's pride. Top of her class in genjutsu. Her katas had been perfected. She was older and prettier than me. Stronger than me too.

What could I do? I was second rate compared to her.

There was a small sensation at the back of my skull, like many hands tickling the back of my brain.

Thinking quickly, I gathered my meagre reserves of chakra to perform the genjutsu I had been practicing in my room for the past few weeks. I would show them that I was capable too.

_Genjutsu: Afterimage._

I rolled out of the reach of Kurenai's leg before she could bring it down, leaving behind an image of my prone form as she brought her heel down on my form. Her foot slide straight through the illusion and slammed into the earth, kicking up a small cloud of dirt.

She looked down bemusedly for a moment before she looked up to see me climbing to my feet a short distance away from her.

"You… you used genjutsu!" She seemed delighted by the prospect. And proud.

I grinned at her, my stomach flooding with warmth.

The tickling sensation was now spidering throughout my head, sharp hot burning wires of pain spreading fire, and the hands scraping along my scalp with invisible claws.

I winced. It hurt.

Kurenai moved forward again, but stuck only to taijutsu, and I suddenly found myself on the defensive. A punch bounced off of my collarbone and I grunted. Neither of our attacks was chakra-enhanced, otherwise her attacks would be doing a whole lot more damage to me.

It was all I could do to bring my hands up to fend off the blows that Kurenai rained down upon me. My head was on fire. I couldn't think. I couldn't concentrate or keep up with Kurenai's attacks.

Something struck me under the chin and I flew backwards. I was so out of it that I didn't even know if it was a fist from an uppercut that had hit me, or a foot from a jump-kick.

Pain exploded from behind my eyes and the hands in my head clawed into my eyes.

Everything went black. No – that wasn't quite right. Everything had gone dark, smudged, but I could still make out Papa, Kurenai and the others as I managed to climb to my feet once again.

It all looked the same, yet everything looked different. I couldn't see their distinctive features, but I could feel _them_. Their individual warmth's. Like a cold blind man could feel the warmth from a light bulb. The hands twitched and twisted restlessly, aching to reach out to their warmth. To strew it about. To render it to its very foundations.

They were evil. The hands scared me.

They fed off of my chakra supply, and I felt my reserves plummet, like water in a bathtub getting sucked down a drain.

The hands only had a short opportunity to tear – to shred – before the chakra they thrived on ran out.

Kurenai was suddenly in front of me, spinning and about to bring home another roundhouse kick that would land in my side.

And I reached out, drawn by some incomprehensible magnetism, and placed my fingers to her forehead.

The hands crawled forward, clambering over each other in haste into the golden knot of sparking threads that emanated the warmth I could sense pressing against me.

She froze.

Her body literally stopped, frozen in the pirouette that would deliver her roundhouse to my kidney.

I quivered. I could feel the hands in her mind, cutting strings, reattaching them here and there. Plucking, tugging, strumming the strings almost playfully.

Then their nails dug in and the tearing began.

Kurenai screamed and I felt the pain as though it were my own. As though my head were being to torn into pieces, not by two hands but by twenty, two hundred, two _thousand_.

I clutched my hands to my head and screamed alongside her.

Broken sentences and exclamations made themselves known to me ears briefly before I was deafened in overwhelming waves of pain.

"Kurenai – Ayaka – going on?!"

"—happening?!"

"—speak—!"

My chakra ran out and the hands dissipated. I collapsed. I couldn't see and there was a heavy weight on my chest pressing down, but that was okay, I couldn't feel any pain either. What I could feel was the foreboding burning sensation in the back of my mind.

I blacked out.

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_**A/N: **__What? What just happened? :O_

_So? What do you think? Kakashi's in this chapter - and Anko. Do you guys understand why Kakashi doesn't like Ayaka? I tried to allude to it rather than state it outright._

_Do you guys like Anko? I love her._

_And what did you make of the sparring match? Fight scenes are notoriously hard to write, but I do enjoy reading them. I hope that you guys liked this one too._

_**Interesting but useless information about the author and other stuff:**_

_When I write that "Interesting but useless…etc." title down, I sing it out as a little jingle._

_I'm trialling how italics look as opposed to having _**bold**_ A/Ns._

_Golf balls have 336 dimples._

_In 1938, Time Magazine chose Adolf Hitler for _man of the year_._

_Humans are the only creatures that cry because of feelings._

_I don't like the taste of coffee and will only drink it if I have to stay up late studying – it's the taste that keeps me awake not the caffeine._

_Owls are the only birds that can see the colour blue._

_I live in Australia (G'day, mate.) And contrary to popular opinion, most Australians actually live in urbanised cities on the east coast. Myself included._

_Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years old or older._

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_Reviews result in good karma ;)_


	4. A Matter of Pride

**Disclaimer:** I do not own nor make any profits of any monetary value from this story, unless, of course, Kishimoto-sama wants to make a generous donation...

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**Chapter 4: A Matter of Pride**

Kakashi had arrived early. Having managed to finish his patrol early thanks to a favour he'd been owed, he had only stopped to double-check where he was headed before he made his way to the Yūhi residence.

The house itself was average in size, much like the home he and his father lived in. It had a large backyard though, with a small koi pond in one corner and a large clearing in the centre where the family no doubt practiced their jutsu or morning exercises.

Kakashi had never met anyone from the Yūhi family before, but his father seemed to have a deep respect for Kurei Yūhi – the head of the family – and seemed to consider him a friend.

He had been surprised to say the least when his father had told him that they would be having dinner at someone else's home. A home-cooked meal was definitely an opportunity for excitement. His father wasn't really much of a cook, and the last time that Kakashi had tried to buy ingredients to make dinner he'd been laughed out of the market district because apparently the prospect of a five-year-old doing the grocery shopping was just too funny to leave alone. So the Hatake family had continued their consumption of take-away and frozen meals for the entirety of their dietary needs, although Kakashi had always wished, just once, that he could come home and find his father home and a fresh home-cooked meal waiting on the dinner table.

The corners of his lips puckered down underneath his mask as he body-flickered to sit on the branch of a tree across the road from the house to wait. He'd wait until his father arrived and then they'd enter together – as father and son.

Like a _real_ family.

But it wasn't to be, he realised, watching his father arrive at the house with a small, dark-haired girl in tow. She was short – shorter than him, at least – and a little younger than himself, also.

Kakashi didn't know who she was but he felt his insides turn cold as he watched the way his father indulgently smiled at her. Seeming to dote on her. They traded words and his father actually seemed interested in what she had to say. As if she had some wisdom to impart.

It made him angry. And hurt.

There was no way that she could be a genin – she wore no hitai-ate – so she must be an Academy student. A young Academy student, judging by her looks, but Kakashi himself had been younger when he'd been admitted into the Academy. _And_ he was a _chūnin_ now. What could she possibly be saying to his father that made his face darken in silent reflection?

Who was she?

His questions were answered when an older girl – quite obviously the young girls' sister – ran out of the house and began chattering excitedly to the two of them. So they were Yūhi's…

The older girl had the same basic features as her younger sister except older. They had the same pale skin, same dark hair, and – although he couldn't make out the colour from his distance – they probably had the same coloured eyes too.

He watched as the older girl led his father into their home, with the younger sister trailing after, closing the front door behind her.

So much for a united front…

He stayed in the tree for a while longer, weighing up whether or not he should actually turn up or just go home and mope. Moping sounded good. But his father had wanted him to come, he had said as much. But Kakashi certainly didn't feel welcome. He hadn't even met the family and already he felt like they wouldn't take too well to him being in their home.

He could imagine them. He could imagine his father. Talking animatedly with each other but refusing to acknowledge his presence as anything more than an inconvenience. A nuisance. He deserved more than that… didn't he?

Moping alone at home definitely seemed like a good plan.

But he'd told his father that he would go… And he hated to disobey him. To disappoint him.

Perhaps… perhaps if he just had a peek of what was happening inside then he could make his decision. Yes. That sounded okay. He would just take a quick look and if he liked what he saw he would introduce himself and – hopefully – spend a pleasant afternoon with his father.

If not… well, he'd figure it out.

Dropping down from the tree, he slipped around the side of the house to the backyard. Silently, he moved to the sliding door at the back of the house where he could hear the voices inside.

"Don't make me live with… with these _people_!" A high voice cried dramatically. He didn't know for sure but he was certain that it was the young girl he had watched with his father before, though it could just as easily been her sister.

"Oh, stop being such a drama queen," a woman admonished, likely the girls' mother.

He felt sick to the stomach as he heard his father's unfamiliar chuckling laugh. He never seemed to laugh when Kakashi was around… Apparently a part of himself was masochistic because he slid the door open to watch the scene unfold. It wouldn't destroy him, Kakashi told himself. It wouldn't mean that his father loved him less than he loved someone else's child.

_It didn't hurt_.

Most of them were gathered in the room that the door he was at opened into, except for a woman he saw through a doorway in what he recognised as a kitchen. A dark-haired man around his own father's age stood near the two dark-haired girls he had seen out the front of the house.

Kakashi watched as his father laughed and scooped the younger girl up in his arms and sat her on his shoulder.

"How's the view from up there, Ayaka-hime?" He asked, grinning broadly. Kakashi felt a knife twist into his heart. He had never seen his father act so carefree and… and fatherly. Perhaps he didn't want Kakashi for a son, but would rather prefer this Ayaka girl as a daughter.

The young girl, Ayaka, sniffed prudishly. "Adequate," she replied with temerity, looking down her nose at the people in the room. She took his fathers' gesture of affection for granted, he realised. Didn't she understand how valuable that was? Didn't she know that he desperately longed for that kind of closeness with his own father?

And as everyone in the room laughed at their antics, Kakashi found himself getting colder and angrier. His fists clenched but he made his face remain passive. How could this girl be showered with the affection from his father that he had always craved? How could she not know how special that was? Why? Wasn't he good enough? He'd always obeyed his father. He'd always admired and been in awe of him.

His father was a powerful shinobi, and Kakashi was proud to be his son. But, Kakashi wondered clenching his fists tighter, was Sakumo proud to be his father?

_Father…_

Everyone in the room whirled to face him; apparently he had spoken aloud.

Kakashi watched as the smiled slipped from his father's face as his gaze landed on him, and he stilled.

"Kakashi…" He muttered in quiet surprise, taking the girl off of his shoulder and placing her back on her feet.

The girl.

He could see her properly now, her and her sister. He could see the slight differences between them; the elder sister's face was sharper, with more angles, whilst Ayaka's was more rounded, smoother. But otherwise they were the same.

The younger girl shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, and her red eyes flicked downwards shyly.

Red eyes…

_Uchiha?_

He nearly spoke the word aloud but caught himself. They were Yūhi, not Uchiha. The "family with the demon eyes", people called them and Kakashi stared at them further, dissecting the details in his head. They were red with an additional red iris surrounding the original, making them seem to pulse a little bit like a visual illusion. Civilians treated them with a little bit of scorn because their eyes had no reason to be red; they were simply just a decorative and unique feature to their faces. The Hyūga's eyes at least made sense. They were dōjutsu and served a purpose on the battlefield. The Sharingan for the Uchiha was the same. The Yūhi eyes had no such excuse.

The sound of his father clearing his throat brought Kakashi back to reality; he kept his expression void of emotion.

"Kurei, Kagura-san." Father began, moving towards Kakashi before turning to face the family. "This is my son, Kakashi. Kakashi, this is Kurei and Kagura-san, and their daughters Kurenai-chan and Ayaka-_hime_." His chuckle was obviously forced and his attempt to lighten the mood was failing dismally. Kakashi was having none of it.

The younger of the two girls stepped forward nervously, eyes darting between looking at the floor and him. Pausing in front of him, she took a deep breath…

And smiled widely.

"Hi, I'm Ayaka. Sakumo-sama has told me so much about you, Kakashi-kun," she chirped, holding out her hand for him to shake. She was waiting for him to take it, waiting for him to smile and laugh and pretend that it didn't bother him that his father enjoyed talking to this girl over himself.

So he stared and waited for her to take the hint.

And waited.

And waited.

He was beginning to think that perhaps she had been frozen like that when her smile faded and her hand fell by her side.

"Kakashi!" His father scolded, frowning down at him. "What's gotten into you?"

_I'm sick of being made to look like a fool_.

He looked up at his father, replying evenly, "Forgive me, Father. I don't feel well. I don't want to spoil your evening so I'll go."

He'd rather be moping in his bedroom.

"Wait," the woman – Ayaka's mother – said, hurrying out of the kitchen. "You're welcome to stay. I'm making salt-broiled saury, your father tells me it's your—"

A hand clamped down on Kakashi's shoulder. "Kakashi, you're not going anywhere." His father commanded. "You're going to apologise to Ayaka here, as well as to Kagura-san and Kurei for your rudeness inside their home."

Kakashi looked to the floor, scuffing his feet slightly. He'd been perfectly polite in the phrasing of his words, so Kakashi didn't understand why he had to _apologise_. He had made sure his tone had been perfectly brokered – if a little clipped.

The woman – Kagura – huffed slightly. "Sakumo-san, an apology isn't—"

"—_Is _entirely necessary, Kagura." The dark-haired man – Ayaka's father, Kurei – cut in. He was looking down at Kakashi, and Kakashi could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Perhaps angering this man hadn't been his wisest move…

"You were invited into _my_ house, where _my_ wife was preparing your favourite dish for dinner, and have the audacity to insult _my_ daughter under _my _own roof! I'm sorry, Sakumo, but I feel like your son _does_ owe my family an apology for his rude behaviour in the sixty seconds that he's been on my property."

Had he really come off as being _that_ rude? Although, it wasn't like Kakashi had made any considerable effort to be amiable. Or any effort at all. No wonder the man was angry.

"No – no. I agree Kurei. I'm sorry that your wife went to so much trouble for my son," his father said.

"Oh no, Sakumo-san! It was no trouble!" Kagura protested.

Kakashi would be lying if he'd said that he didn't feel even a little chastened by the fact that the family _had_ actually been expecting him, even going so far as to cook his favourite dish.

Perhaps he _did_ owe them all an apology.

"I apologise for my misconduct, everyone." He said, scuffing his shoes on the floor again, looking down. Then he stepped forward to Ayaka and held out his hand. "I'm sorry for my rudeness, Yūhi-san."

She hesitated only a moment before taking it, her grip weak. "You can just call me Ayaka," she said. Kakashi wasn't sure how to feel about that. He didn't want to remain rude, but he didn't particularly want to befriend this father-stealing little girl either.

Kurei gave Kakashi one last pointed look before turning back to face everyone. "Okay. Now that that's over, who wants to help me set the table? I'm guessing the saury is nearly finished, Kagura?"

Kagura's face fell. "The saury!" She raced back into the kitchen and the smell of burnt saury flooded the room. Kakashi's face fell slightly. It was his entire fault. He'd distracted them with his stupid behaviour.

But they seemed okay with the fact that half their dinner had been ruined, and no one brought up that he was likely responsible for it happening. No one so much as looked at him funny.

It was almost… _nice_.

Sakumo asked Kurei to show him what Kurenai had been learning, which soon escalated into the two Yūhi girls having a taijutsu only spar.

Kakashi watched, face impassive, next to his father as Ayaka and Kurenai faced each other. He wasn't personally invested in the match – he wasn't rooting for _either_ girl – but he was interested to see how far two members of the same family would take a sparring match. It wasn't like Kakashi had a brother or sister of his own to spar against.

Kurei looked between the two of them. "Taijutsu only," he reiterated.

Kurenai rolled her eyes. "We _know_, Otou-san. We heard you the first time."

The two sisters stepped back into identical fighting stances. They stood still for only a moment, eyeing each other off before they suddenly moved.

Kurenai ran forward first. It was an eager move. Her feet landing too heavily on the ground, and she was very slow also. Her guard opened up and allowed an easy striking target that Ayaka took advantage of. Kakashi's eyes lifted as he watched the younger sister snap a kick into the other girls' chest, watching as Kurenai fell backwards.

Short of chakra-enhancing their hits, it seemed like there was going to be no hits barred.

Kurenai's leg snaked out and swept Ayaka's feet out from under her, where she landed awkwardly on her tailbone. In a flash, Kurenai was back on her feet again as her sister struggled to collect herself.

Another snap kick from Kurenai sent Ayaka flying backwards into the grass again.

Kakashi couldn't say that he was particularly impressed. He was leaps and bounds ahead of these two.

Ayaka stayed down, panting heavily. It was pitiable that she was apparently so drained already. It wouldn't be good for her shinobi career if she couldn't last long in a fight. Kurenai darted over to her prone form again; sweeping her leg upwards into an axe kick that would, at the very least, fracture bone.

Kakashi noticed from the corner of his eye that his father had started forward, intending to intervene in the spar before Ayaka could get hurt, but Kurei held his arm out in front of him, effectively halting him.

Kakashi watched on.

He didn't notice it until it had already happened, Kurenai's leg sliding through what was quite obviously a genjutsu. Ayaka stood a little while away, panting heavily. She really did have to work on her stamina, though the fact that she'd pulled off the genjutsu in such a way that not even he had noticed it showed that she perhaps wouldn't be a completely dud shinobi.

"You… you used genjutsu!" Kurenai said, seemingly delighted. Kakashi frowned. Ayaka had cheated, why would Kurenai be happy about that?

Ayaka grinned at her sister, then winced, pressing a hand to her temple as if her head hurt.

But Kurenai was moving forward again. Ayaka was hard-pressed to keep up with her sister, it was all she could do to block – not dodge or even counterattack – _just_ block her sister's onslaught of attacks and before he knew it, Ayaka was falling backwards, hands clutching her head.

She stumbled to her feet again just as Kurenai rushed at her with a roundhouse kick.

Kakashi's skin prickled. Something suddenly felt very off. The intensity of Ayaka's chakra was all wrong, and not just wrong – different too. He wasn't a sensor-nin so he couldn't tell more than what his gut told him – and it was telling him that Ayaka's chakra was plummeting, as if feeding a jutsu. Which couldn't be right. She was just standing there, her hands clutching at her head. No hand signs. No – anything. Just a face that was bunched up in pain.

Then her face slackened. Kakashi couldn't see her eyes from where he stood but the rest of her body seemed to waver also, and for a moment he thought she was going to faint.

But then she darted forward, skimming inside the range of Kurenai's kick and pressed two fingers to Kurenai's forehead.

Kakashi couldn't breathe as Ayaka's chakra flared and Kurenai froze, her body seemingly stuck in the middle of her kick. He didn't know what to what to make of it. Beside him, his father and Kurei went still, not daring to breathe as they felt the daunting quality that Ayaka's chakra had adopted. Kakashi himself – again, not the best chakra sensor – could almost _see_ the chakra flowing down Ayaka's arm and into Kurenai's head. It was so faint that it was almost impossible to perceive its colour – or if it had a colour at all.

Then the screaming began. First Kurenai, then Ayaka. One stuck in an off-putting and uncomfortable stance, the other clutching at her head.

Kurei ran forward, and I saw Kagura sprinting from the house towards her daughters. "Kurenai! Ayaka! What's going on?!" She cried.

Kurei ignored her and reached his daughters, catching Ayaka as her chakra emptied to a frightening level and she toppled forward.

Sakumo caught Kurenai as her body sagged.

"Kurei! What's happening? What happened?" Kagura hollered again, reaching her daughters.

"Speak to me! Ayaka!" Kurei shouted at his daughter's prone form.

She was empty, or at least close to. If she weren't taken to the hospital she could quite easily die from chakra exhaustion.

"We need to get them to the hospital," Sakumo said, lifting Kurenai into both of his arms.

"I'll clear the way and inform the Emergency Room," Kakashi informed, before racing to the hospital.

This was always a problem with having children train to use their chakra so young, Kakashi thought as he darted away to the hospital to inform them of the two new incoming patients. Children below the age of six had only a meagre supply of chakra, so little in fact that Kakashi had heard that during the Second Shinobi War, it wasn't uncommon for young children to die from chakra exhaustion from just using chakra to run _to_ the battlefield.

It was a dangerous world out there. But, of course, he knew that.

And in the midst of all the chaos of what had happened, Kakashi found a silver lining.

At least he wasn't helpless, like she was. At least he wasn't _useless_.

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**A/N: Hello again! Sorry for the late update, it's my first week back at uni and I've just been swamped with work and study that I need to do.**

**In the last chapter, some of you guys also didn't understand why Ayaka's dad got so grumpy so quickly, but that's really just because of how I view his personality. Kurei (Ayaka's dad) isn't one for politics and dramatics – he wants no part in it. So when Kakashi rocks up to his house all angst-ridden and then proceeds to be rude to his family, he essentially puts an end to it by trying to get Kakashi off his high horse. He's a bit of a hard-ass.**

**I hope it made sense to y'all.**

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_**Interesting but useless information about the author and other stuff:**_

_**It sometimes rains diamonds on Uranus and Neptune (please, no Uranus jokes about this)**_

_**Men are six times more likely to be struck by lightning (that's because we're crazy attractive – or, at least, I am)**_

_**Both of actor Jack Black's parents were rocket scientists and his mother worked on the Hubble Telescope.**_

_**The scientific term for being left-handed is 'sinistrality'; for being right-handed it's 'dextrality'.**_

_**I am right-handed (which means I'm dominant).**_

_**So lnog as the fsirt and lsat lteerts ramein the smae, the haumn mnid can raed tihs stenncee.**_

_**My blood type is O positive (which means I can give all positive people – and vampires – what they want).**_

_**Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest and lost.**_

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**Thanks for reading this chapter! I hoped you enjoyed it. Hopefully the next chapter will be finished soon. So gimme some lovin'.**

**And a review would be cool too.**


	5. Waking Dream

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything – wait, let me just check my wallet. Nope, I've got nothing!

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**A/N: Wait, what? An update? Nah. That's not what this is. You're crazy.**

**Just kidding, here's another long-ish chapter for you to enjoy. You should check out my bio, I usually do status updates on where I'm at with the next chapter and an estimate on when I'll post next.**

**On another note, thank you to everyone who reviewed/followed/etc. I love hearing what you guys think about the story; it really helps me out knowing if I'm doing something right. So please keep those reviews coming :)**

**An extra thanks to Azuki Bean who has reviewed every chapter so far. I always look forward to you reviews.**

**Just a heads up, this chapter starts off a little… different. Let me know what you think.**

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**Chapter 5: Waking Dream**

It was the light from an early rising sun that awoke me, jarring my mind into consciousness. My own fault, no doubt. I mustn't have closed the blinds the night before. The sun was warm, though, and I had to admit that waking to the rising sun did feel a lot more poetic than an alarm clock.

Speaking of alarm clocks…

I rolled over and checked the time.

_06:08_

My alarm wouldn't be going off for a while yet. But still, I was awake. I should probably start getting my stuff together. Today was an important day, after all.

The body next to me stirred and I giggled as a hand snuck out from under the mound of blankets to snatch my wrist before I could go very far from the bed.

"…Wha'imeizzit?" Came a muffled mutter from beneath the blankets before Shane's head appeared out from beneath the mound. With his bleary eyes and mussed hair, I couldn't help but reach over and try to pat it down.

"It's nearly ten past six," I said, stepping away and attempting to gently tug my hand back, but his grip remained firm.

He scowled. "This is… Uhhh." He stopped for a moment to yawn, bringing up his other hand to cup in front of his mouth. "This is ridiculous. Come back to bed."

I rolled my eyes. "C'mon, Shane. You know I need to go into the university today."

"Mmm? Why's that?"

I fought the urge to roll my eyes again.

"I have to present my dissertation to Professor Godfrey today to see—"

"The handsy one?" Shane pulled himself out of his nest of blankets – which he had pulled from me during the night (honestly the man was just as bad as a child) – and sat up against the headboard.

"What does that even mean?" I asked, perhaps a little too sharply.

He blinked at me innocently – too innocently. "He's the one who likes to be a little too familiar with his PhD students, isn't he?"

"Maybe…" I acquiesced. "But it's a harmless thing. You know, like an old man in a home pinching a nurse's bottom. He doesn't mean anything by it."

His look turned cutting. "He's pinched your bottom?"

I laughed again and leaned over to place a kiss on his forehead. "Nothing like that, I promise." I pulled back. "Now, stop being so possessive and go make me some breakfast. And a sandwich."

"You like it when I'm possessive." He said. His eyes turning mischievous for a second before his face morphed into his very best puppy-dog face, his eyes gazing up at me innocently. "How about you come back to bed and I make you something else…?"

"No. No way. Not today. I don't want to be running late. I need to be on top of things today." I walked over to the dressing table and began picking out clothes for me to wear for the day.

His big, brown eyes blinked at me sadly. "You could be on top of me to-"

"_No_!"

"Are you sure?"

"_Yes_!"

"'Yes', you'll be on top?" He asked hopefully.

"No!"

"So you want to me to be on top?"

I'm going to kill him. I was truly going to kill him. "Neither! No snuggles for you this morning."

"Please…?"

"Stop it! It's not going to happen. And that's that!" I stomped my foot for good measure.

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"Goddamnit! I hate you!" I raced around the room picking up my strewn about clothing.

Shane gazed up at the ceiling, his hands behind his head with the biggest, smuggest grin on his face that I had ever seen.

"I'm probably going to be late because of you!"

"Meh. I don't mind." He said, turning over in our bed to watch me dash around, his eyes following me almost lazily.

"Of course you don't!" _Where were my blasted socks?_ "Some of us actually have to get up before 9 a.m. to get to our jobs!"

"Isn't that a shame? You should probably start rethinking you career choice if it's going to be like this all the time – for my sake." That self-satisfied grin was still on his face.

"Shut up," I snapped.

I finally found and retrieved my pair of socks from where they had been – ahem – kicked under the bed. I didn't look at Shane's face again as I shuffled into the bathroom. I slammed the door behind me though, locking it for good measure.

I didn't need Shane getting any more ideas.

After having my long overdue shower, I found Shane preparing breakfast as I stepped into the adjoined dining room.

"Nothing special," Shane called over the hiss of the frying pan. "Just bacon and some scrambled eggs."

"Oh good." I replied, sitting down to put on my shoes. "How's my sandwich coming along?"

He half-turned to face me. "You were serious about that?"

"Always am."

He scoffed, and turned back to the pan. "You know," he began. "Since you never watch them – and we're running out of space – I think you should consider getting rid of your anime collection."

"Never." No hesitation.

"But at least just-"

"Over my dead body." No hesitation there, either. I was quite proud of myself.

He sighed. "At least take a look. You don't have to get rid of all of them. We can even just move some of your less favourite ones up into the ceiling, just so we can.

This time it was turn to sigh. May the anime gods forgive me, but I was okay with that compromise. "Fine… But don't blame me if I'm hostile towards you for the next few weeks."

He turned to face me, his lips tugging into a slight smirk. "I think I can manage."

"Prick…" I muttered, standing up.

"I heard that!"

I moved into our matchbox-sized living room and went straight for the shelf holding our DVD collections. There were several DVDs belonging to Shane – and a few games that he played – but most belonged to me. TV shows like _Bones_, _The Mindy Project_ and _Supernatural_; some cartoon series including _The Legend of Korra_; a tonne of anime series like _Bleach_, _Soul Eater_, _Naruto—_

_Naruto_…

That word. There was something about it. Something about that one word that raised some flags. Something wasn't quite right about it. Sure, I remembered watching the series many years ago, laughing at Naruto's antics, getting annoyed at Sasuke's overall character, wanting to throttle Sakura for her uselessness, chuckling at Kakashi's fanatical fascination with the _Icha Icha_ series…

Wait.

Kakashi…?

_A boy around Kurenai's age stood at our open backdoor, in easy view of the antics going on in the kitchen and dining room. He stood only a little taller than Kurenai did but had a shock of silver-grey hair on his head and a mask from his uniform stretched over the lower half of his face._

…_And without ever seeing this boy before I knew exactly who he was._

The images and thoughts – almost like memories – slammed unbidden into my mind and I physically stooped under their invisible weight.

They seemed too much like memories. And why had I thought about Kurenai...? Kurenai wasn't even an important character to the series. The show only ever showed her in one or two fight scenes…

It's funny how I based a character's importance to the show by the amount of fight scenes that they were in.

My world wavered.

There was… something. In my head. Something I couldn't quite place, except that it told me that where I was, was wrong. What I was thinking was wrong. Whom I loved was wrong.

_What is your name?_

The question took me by surprise and I hesitated. I knew my name. Of course I did… Didn't I?

I mean, how could I not?

But the name I possessed wasn't the name that the voice wanted.

_What is your name?_

_Chelsea_, I offered to the voice. _My name is Chelsea._

_What is your name?_

I didn't know. I had no idea.

_What. Is. Your. Name?_

_I don't know_, I prayed to the voice. _I don't know what name you're asking for!_

"Hey Chelsea," Shane said as he appeared in the living room doorway. "Have you seen Kurenai?"

"What did you just say?"

"I said, 'have you seen my car keys?'"

"Oh."

"I hope you see Sakumo again…"

"_What?_"

He frowned. "I said, 'I hope they're not in my sock draw again'. Hey, are you feeling okay?"

No. No, I wasn't.

Sakumo… As in Sakumo Hatake? Kakashi's dad?

Everything flickered again, and then winked out. Voices flooded my senses – my hearing, sight and taste. It was an impossible reaction to sound but I felt it. More and more voices joined the cacophony in my head.

"_Kurei, Kagura-san. This is my son, Kakashi. Kakashi, this Kurei and Kagura-san, and their daughters Kurenai-san and Ayaka-hime."_

…

"_Hi, I'm Ayaka. Sakumo-sama has told me so much about you, Kakashi-kun."_

…

"_What's your name?"_

"_A-Ayaka Yūhi."_

…

"_I like you."_

…

"…_Hi. My name is Ayaka."_

…

The images – memories – were flooding in now, cramming their way into my brain, burning, stretching, reminding… How could I have forgotten my own name?

I knew now. I knew who I was.

And this… this world. Wasn't real… This world didn't belong to me. I wasn't a part of it. At least, not anymore. Perhaps I had been once. Once, when I was still Chelsea; but I was not her anymore. Her time had come and gone, and it was time for someone new to take centre-stage.

"Chelsea! What's wrong?" Shane knelt before me, his hand stretching to land on my back.

I recoiled and pulled away.

"Chelsea, calm down! Are you sick?" He sounded panicked, but it wasn't real.

"This isn't real…"

"What do you mean?" Shane asked. "What are you trying to say?"

"You're not real!"

"Chelsea! I'm right here! Of course I'm real!"

"No. You're not." I said, scuttling further away as Shane began to shuffle closer. "None of this is real. This is all just made-up!"

"No! No, it's not!" He sounded pained now. He kept moving forward, as if desperate to touch me – to reassure me. To convince me to stay.

But this wasn't home. It was just some farce – some illusion – conjured up to distract me.

_Distract me from what?_

"Chelsea, _please_," he choked. "I'll let you keep your DVDs! I'll do anything! Just don't go anywhere!"

"I need to go home."

"No. You don't! That's not your home. Your home is here with me! You're safer here with me!" Shane almost shouted at me. "You don't understand! You don't _want _to go back—you _shouldn't_ want to go back! Trust me. You trust me, don't you?"

"I don't know you." Chelsea had known him, I didn't.

He gaped at me for a second, but recovered quickly. "But I know _you_, Chelsea, and—"

"My name isn't Chelsea."

The walls began to spin around us, and from seemingly nowhere a familiar middle-aged couple were suddenly standing over Shane's shoulder, looking down at me.

"Don't leave us, my darling," the woman said, her light-coloured hair pulled up into a severe bun and the eyes behind her glass swimming. The middle-aged man on her arm had crows feet around his eyes and the edges of his dark hair was beginning to grey.

"Mum…? Dad…?" I breathed.

"Live, Seashell," Dad – no, the _man_ – said, looking at me sadly. "Live with us. Live for your future. Don't leave. Don't make us go on without you."

"B-but," I choked, nearly crying out. "You're not real!"

"Of course, we're real," the woman soothed softly. "Chelsea…"

"My name isn't Chelsea!" I practically screamed. I wanted them to go away. I didn't belong here. _They_ didn't belong here!

Shane stared at me for a moment, blinking fast. He made a move to touch me again but his hand fell short. "Then what _is_ your name?"

_What is your name?_

"What is your name?" Chelsea's parent's intoned together at the same moment. Their monotony was almost scary.

_What is your name?_

I took a deep breath, centring myself. My mind cleared and the name came to me almost like a nerve reflex – involuntarily and uncontrollable. The name burst from my lips. "Ayaka Yūhi – my name is Ayaka Yūhi. And I want to go home."

I felt a light tingling sensation all over my body as I changed. My hair darkened, the planes of my face rearranged, my eyes changed colours; my whole body shortened and thinned to that of a five-year-old girl.

Chelsea's parents gave me a horrified look, but it was Shane who made a desperate grab for me.

"No! Wait – you don't want to go back! Trust me! There's danger-!"

The world around us shuddered, flickering and trembling. And then everything began to fold in upon itself, as if it were made of paper. Chelsea's parents. The walls. The DVD collection and TV. And then Shane himself. All of it disappearing into itself until there was nothing left except darkness. Even the floor below me had disappeared. I was sitting – floating, perhaps? – in darkness, unable to determine if I were facing up or down, spinning or still, rising or falling.

And through it all, Shane's words echoed back to me.

_There's danger…_

What could he possibly mean by that?

.

* * *

.

I awoke slowly and pleasantly, stretching the kinks and knots from my shoulders and arms as I yawned widely. It had been a good sleep. A very good sleep. I must have slept like a log and slept right through any attempts Mama could have made to rouse me.

_That dream though…_

I stretched again. My mattress was so, so soft. I could almost imagine drifting off again…

But no. I had to get up. I had to get to the Academy, and my classes. Papa would get mad if he thought I was ditching my training to just lay around in bed all day. Yeah, he definitely wouldn't be pleased.

But my eyes were so heavy. I tried to force them open but they only just quickly sealed closed again. I must have been really tired last night.

Blindly, I reached out for the bottle of water I kept on my bedside table. My mouth was so dry; it felt like it was stuffed with cotton. At first I touched nothing, then the back of my hand knocked over something hard and it hit the ground with a startling _crash_.

_That_ woke me up.

I started forward in bed, heart hammering and my eyes snapping open.

This… this wasn't my bedroom. Actually, this wasn't even a room in my house, it almost looked like a… a hospital room? I looked down to the floor. Shards of glass and flowers littered the floor. It had obviously been a vase – in its past life. Not anymore.

_Past life…_

My dream… It had been so strange. So very vivid and foreboding. And those people… I had known them. They were people who had been important to me. I tried to recall their names – their faces – but the dream was slipping away the more I tried to grasp at it. I remembered the events – the warning that I was in danger – but who exactly were these people? I had known them while I was in the dream, but then again, no one really questions anything when they're dreaming.

Except me. I had known that it wasn't real.

My head was starting to hurt.

"Ayaka!"

I glanced up, seeing Mama and Papa rush into the room followed by a haggard nurse. But something was off with them. I could see that they were my parents but I could see something else too. It seemed familiar.

It took me only a short moment to understand that it was not what I was _seeing_ – it was what I was _feeling._

That warmth.

The sparking threads. They weren't precisely visible, but I could sense them. Somehow. Just like I had with Kurenai.

"Ayaka! Thank goodness, you're awake!" Mama cried, darting around to the side of the bed that didn't have glass all over the floor and hugging me tight to her chest. I allowed myself to be swallowed by her arms and pushed my face into her chest. It felt nice to be held like this.

I looked up. Papa was watching me from the foot of the hospital bed. He looked… tired, but I could see the small smile of relief on his face that made me feel guilty that I had worried them.

Wait—where was Kurenai?

"Otou-san. Kaa-san." I mumbled. My throat was so dry it was hard to get any sound out. I licked my lips and tried again. "Otou-san, Kaa-san, w-why am I-?" I managed to choke out before I began a coughing fit.

Mama pushed a cup of water into my hands and I drained it without thought, holding it out for more. I watched the nurse sweep up the shards of glass and broken flowers with a broom as Mama filled the cup again from the jug of water on a table nearby.

We were silent as I drained two more cups of water and the nurse left the room, having swept all the debris into a dustpan, before anyone spoke.

"Ayaka," Papa pressed gently. "Do you remember what happened?"

_What had happened?_

"Yes," I said, glad to feel that the words were coming out a lot easier now. "We… we were sparring. You were there." I glanced up at Papa. He seemed to be waiting for me to continue. "And then something happened. My head was hurting. And then what was hurting my head started to hurt Kurenai."

Silence fell over the room once again. I sat there, in the bed, watching Mama and Papa as they looked at me for what felt like an eternity before I felt the overwhelming need to fill the void between us.

"Otou-san. Is Kurenai… okay? Where is she?" I could feel my lips trembling as the questions tumbled out of them. I had to know. I blinked quickly in a vain attempt to keep the tears at bay.

Papa smiled. "Yes, she's fine. Don't worry about her. She's awake and talking." I breathed a sigh of relief. "You slept through the whole night and most of today."

"Huh?" I couldn't help but gape. How long had I been unconscious?

Mama laughed. "You've been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours. It's almost four in the afternoon. You were very chakra exhausted, and then you got a fever during the night and you were speaking nonsense. Your father and I had couldn't make sense of what you were saying."

A fever? But I felt fine. _Oh_. The dream. It must have been a fever-dream…

That would make sense.

But still… I wasn't convinced.

And sheesh, it was already four in the afternoon? I was _so_ not going to get to sleep tonight.

"Do you know what happened yesterday? What made me use all of my chakra? Is it my fault? Did I do something wrong?" I rushed out, suddenly remembering my utterly useless and feeble attempts to stop the hands from grabbing at Kurenai. Perhaps everyone encountered these "hands" upon using chakra and just hadn't told me about it…

Unlikely.

I shuddered. I didn't want to have to think about them. I just wanted to shove them far, far away in the back of my head and forget that they had ever emerged.

But it just wasn't that easy.

I had to confront this. To make sure that this would never happen again. I had heard stories – Mama would tell them to me at bedtime – of shinobi with too strong a skill accidently hurting those around them, as well as spurned individuals who made desperate deals for power that always came back to haunt them.

I had to understand what was happening to me. Maybe then I could stop it from happening again.

Mama and Papa shared a look before Mama jumped to answer me. "Of course it wasn't your fault, honey. It was just a freak accident."

But their hesitation had been answer enough.

"What happened to her – to Kurenai. Really."

Papa sighed, running a hand through his hair. "She was put under a very strong genjutsu, we think."

"You think?"

"Yes, that's what we believe."

"But you don't know for sure?"

"…No."

"Oh-_kay_." I looked down, clasping my hands together in my lap. "Was I…? Did I do that? Was I the one who made that genjutsu? It didn't _feel_ like a genjutsu."

Mama and Papa shared another look with each other, communicating silently. After a while, they seemed to come to some kind of an agreement as they both turned back to face me without a word being uttered.

"…Yes. That's what your father and I think." Mama said, taking my hand and squeezing it gently.

"But it didn't feel like a genjutsu," I reiterated, as if it were a valid excuse for what I had caused. "It felt like something else entirely."

Mama's shoulders sagged in defeat at my admission, and Papa's face twisted into a stern frown.

I realised something at that moment. "You know something about this."

They didn't answer, only continued to look at me.

"You have to tell me what's happening to me," I begged. "I need to learn to control it so that it won't happen again and—"

"Enough!" Papa interrupted sharply.

"Kurei…" Mama said gently, turning to face her husband. "I think it might be a good idea to tell her."

Papa frowned at her for a moment before he turned back to face me. He seemed to consider his next words carefully before he spoke them. "Ayaka. Your mother and I have something very important that we need to tell you." He stopped speaking; looking suddenly conflicted.

_If he says that I'm adopted, I am going to flip_ _**out**_.

"We think that you may have an… _ability_ from your mothers' side of the family…" Papa said slowly, treading carefully.

My mother's side of the family…? Okay, so I'm not adopted. Good. What ability? I looked at Mama but her eyes were downcast as if she were ashamed. Or scared. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why we didn't speak about her side of the family. Kurenai had already told me that she had managed to figure out that Mama was born to a shinobi clan, but not which clan – obviously not one of the larger ones.

"Kaa-san?" I asked quietly. "You were born to a shinobi clan, weren't you? What is Otou-san talking about? What ability?"

Mama said nothing, just shook her head noncommittally.

"Yes, your mother was born to a shinobi clan. We don't talk about them because they didn't approve of your mother's… choices." _As in, Mama married whom she wanted to_. "This clan was once great and widely feared due to the ability they wielded – the _kekkai genkai _they possessed – but in recent times the number of clansmen born with the _kekkai_ _genkai_ has fallen to one every generation – if they're lucky."

So… was Papa telling me that he thought that I had a _kekkai genkai_? Received from a family that I didn't know. I tried to think of all the clans I knew of that possessed _kekkai genkai_. The Hyūga (I was definitely not one of them); the Uchiha (possibly, though Mama didn't look like any of the Uchiha that I had ever seen); the Senju (that wouldn't make any sense, their _kekkai genkai_ was the Wood-style, not mental hands that could enter other peoples' minds). What other clans in Konoha could there be?

I couldn't think of any.

The Yamanaka's, Nara's and Akimichi's were all prominent clans, but their abilities were due to keeping their techniques secret, rather than being due to an actual innate ability.

Yeah, I was out of ideas.

"So you think that I have this… _kekkai genkai_?" I asked, my stomach sinking. I had overheard Papa telling Mama about the massacres of people with _kekkai genkai_ in Kirigakure – the Hidden Mist village – whether they were loyal shinobi or innocent children.

"Yes," Mama answered, meeting my eyes for the first time. "Usually it isn't bad but when it culminates unexpectedly…" She left the sentence go unfinished.

But what did this _kekkai genkai_ actually _do_? I thought back to what I had felt during the spar yesterday and found that the memories came back surprisingly easily for me. The hands made of chakra scratching around inside my head were a little too hard to forget. I shuddered. I had stepped toward Kurenai and pressed my fingers to her forehead and my chakra had surged forward into her mind.

Much like a genjutsu.

Except that I hadn't needed to concentrate. I hadn't _directed_ my chakra to do that – I wasn't sure if I was even at that level of control where I could pull off a genjutsu that could incapacitate someone for a few hours. And the sheer _amount_ of chakra that would have been needed to… well, no wonder I had fainted from exhaustion.

Papa must have been following my line of thought because he confirmed my suspicions. "It's a proficiency with genjutsu and an influence over the human mind so great that you can literally kill with genjutsu alone."

I blinked in surprise. "B-but that's impossible!" I squawked, gawking at both my parents. "Genjutsu are just illusions. How can you kill someone with only using _illusions_?"

Papa looked to Mama for an explanation.

"My clan has dwindled considerably since the days before the founding of Konoha," she began, looking as if she had swallowed something sour. "The _kekkai genkai_ of my family has diluted throughout that time too, to the point where everyone has an above aptitude for genjutsu – myself included – but do not inherit the _kekkai_ _genkai _in its entirety. But sometimes a member of the clan is born with the full _kekkai genkai_ – not the diluted one that the rest of us have.

"This ability – the _Usosekai_ – makes it possible to kill a person through genjutsu because it takes complete control over key parts of the brain, such as the medulla oblongata, which is key in controlling involuntary functions such as heartbeat, blood pressure and breathing. The Usosekai allows an individual to control these things within the body, essentially making it possible to persuade the body into having a heart attack or to stop breathing altogether. That's what makes it possible to kill someone using genjutsu. Are you following, Ayaka?"

I nodded. It was just… a lot to take in. That I would be able to do this. The prospect that I would be able to get inside a persons' head and persuade their body to just die made me feel a little nauseous.

"So if I were to cast a genjutsu of a blizzard then…?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, but yes, your victim could die of hypothermia. But it's very difficult to just kill someone using genjutsu. You have to have access parts of the brain that other genjutsu users would never dream of being able to reach." Mama stated.

It was a relief to hear her say that I wouldn't just be able to _think_ someone to death, that just maybe I wouldn't accidentally kill my loved ones with a stray thought or ill-tempered emotion. But something still didn't sit right with me – memories of my past life had re-emerged after the strange dream I'd had. I could remember things about this world that I could only remember knowing when I was an infant. It was an alienating feeling, the concept that I was remembering aspects of my past life that pertained to my future.

But I remembered.

Not everything, but enough to make sense of what was happening. And what was going to happen. _Sakumo_… I remembered how his storyline was going to end – and how it affected Kakashi. They didn't deserve what was going to happen to them. It wasn't fair. But maybe I could make a difference. Sakumo was rumoured to have been at least as strong – if not stronger – than the Sannin themselves, I would be doing Konoha a great disservice if I left Sakumo to his fate.

"It's a lot to take in, I know." Mama said gently, bringing me from my reverie.

_They truly had no idea_…

"Ayaka," Papa said sternly, moving to stand beside me so I had to crane my neck to look at him. "You can't tell anyone about this, do you understand me?"

_Yes_. I nodded, feeling a little intimidated by his intensity.

I knew for the obvious reasons not to tell anyone that I had a _kekkai genkai_ that would turn me into a 'killing machine'. I wasn't scared so much of Kirigakure's persecution, rather than the prospect of more immediate dangers like ROOT or Orochimaru finding out that a girl from a small shinobi family with no considerable connections had the ability to persuade people to just drop dead. And while I could easily see it as being used as a force for good, I could just as easily see it being abused and myself being coerced or tortured into using it to hurt innocents.

Man, my imagination was going overboard today.

A sudden thought struck me. "Wait—what about Kurenai? Does she have the Usos-thing—the ability?"

"No," Papa replied. "It's possible that she inherited the aptitude-for-genjutsu aspect from your mother's family, but other than that—no. But don't worry we'll have you back to your old self in no time."

_My old self?_

"What do you mean, Otou-san?" I asked.

"Don't worry about it too much, Ayaka. The Hokage has decided – and we agree - to get a fuinjutsu specialist in to seal away the Usosekai so that this won't happen again." Papa informed me.

I was stunned. He was just going to lock it away? Shouldn't this ability be nurtured? It would definitely give me an edge above everybody else – friends and enemies alike. It just didn't make sense to seal away an ability – my ability – that had so much potential, and I told Papa as such.

"Like I said, Ayaka. We don't want a repeat of what happened yesterday during the spar. You don't want something like that to happen again, do you?" I felt immediately chastened, my ire dissipating. He was right. It wouldn't be worth keeping if it were only just going to explode in my family's faces and mine. "Perhaps," Papa continued. "One day you may come to the stage where you are ready to learn how to use it, or the seal weakens so gradually that you acclimatise to it slowly, but that day is not today."

.

* * *

.

_I had to see her_, I thought, walking down the hospital corridor towards Kurenai's room.

The same haggard nurse who had cleaned up the vase I had broken had come in earlier to usher my parents out of the room, clucking something about keeping me in the hospital overnight for observation.

Not much later, I had jumped out of bed and bugged an intern into telling me where my sister's room was.

Room 39…

Room 40…

Room—Ah! Room 42. The room Kurenai was in.

I stepped inside, closing the door softly behind me. The curtain was closed around the only occupied bed in the room and I made my way quietly towards it. There was a soft glow from a lamp coming from behind the curtain that dimly lit the dark room, so I knew that there was a good chance that she was awake. I took a deep breath and clasped my trembling hands together, afraid that she might be changing or sleeping and I she might get angry with me for disturbing her.

I could only hope that she didn't hate me for putting her in the hospital to begin with.

I took a quick peek around the curtain.

And let out the deep breath that I hadn't even been aware that I had been holding.

Kurenai was sitting up in her hospital bed, reading by the lamp on her bedside table. She looked up as I entered her space, smiling politely.

"Nee-san! I'm so glad you're okay!" I raced forward and hugged her, fighting hard to hold back the tears.

I felt immediately that something was very wrong. Kurenai had gone very stiff all of a sudden and she wasn't hugging back – she always hugged back.

I pulled back, seeing her face looking at me with bemused surprise.

"Onee-san…?"

"I'm sorry… Do I know you?" She asked confusedly, blinking fast and putting down her book.

_Huh?_

"I-I-I'm-" I stopped, thrown by her question, I couldn't recollect myself. I took a deep breath. "I'm Ayaka, silly." Upon her blank look, I added. "Your sister."

Kurenai looked puzzled. "I don't have a sister."

.

* * *

.

**A/N: WHAT! Another cliff-hanger?! God, I hate myself sometimes.**

**Also! I should probably apologise for not updating sooner. I've been kept busy with university stuff so my free time to write is extremely narrow. I'm also going to have to do some work on plotting out the next few chapters so the next update might not be for a while (hopefully not though).**

**Anyway, what did y'all think of Chelsea and Shane? Obviously, it was more dream than memory, but there were some very real aspects to the dream that were really a part of Ayaka past/Chelsea's life, namely, Chelsea's large collection of anime and that she was writing a dissertation. Huh? Oh yeah, I guess Shane can be real too ;)**

**And what the hell happened to Kurenai? That's so freaking weird. Imagine your sibling/parent/cat just forgetting who you were. It'd definitely lead to some trouble.**

* * *

_**Interesting but useless information about the author and other stuff:**_

_**Throughout the entire Twilight saga, there are 24 minutes of just staring.**_

_**Robert Downey Jr. was once arrested after he was caught driving naked in his Porsche with cocaine, heroine and a .357 magnum (fyi – that's not a type of ice-cream).**_

_**I'm piggybacking off of my university's free WiFi to upload this to you guys.**_

_**Carrie Fisher wore no underwear in Star Wars because George Lucas convinced her "there is no underwear in outer-space".**_

_**Drinking 2 cups of cold water on an empty stomach can boost metabolism by 30% (you should still eat though).**_

_**I'm not sure about other countries, but in Australia we have "caps" on our internet, whereby you pay for a certain amount of gigabytes worth of bandwidth a month and if that amount is exceeded your internet is either slowed down to prehistoric speeds or completely cut-off.**_

_**Ancient Greeks believed that red heads would turn into vampires after they died.**_

_**.**_

**If you have a moment, please drop me a review.**


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